Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov claimed that French intelligence services asked him to censor content related to the election in Moldova in 2024 in exchange for saying “good things” to the judge overseeing his trial, which he declined to do.
Durov said the messaging platform initially took down some posts that “clearly” violated Telegram’s terms of service, but declined to remove any additional content for political reasons. Durov wrote in a Sunday Telegram post:
“Shortly thereafter, the Telegram team received a second list of so-called ‘problematic’ Moldovan channels. Unlike the first, nearly all of these channels were legitimate and fully compliant with our rules.
Their only commonality was that they voiced political positions disliked by the French and Moldovan governments. We refused to act on this request,” he continued.
Source: Pavel Durov
The crypto industry rallied behind Durov following his August 2024 arrest in France, and the related developments in his ongoing case, as the battle for free speech between tech platforms and state governments attempting to impose censorship polices unfolds.
Related: Telegram founder Pavel Durov says case going nowhere, slams French gov
French and European authorities previously asked Telegram to censor political content
In May 2025, Durov pointed to a previous incident in which French intelligence services pressured Telegram into censoring Romanian election content, which he also declined to do.
“You can’t ‘defend democracy’ by destroying democracy. You can’t ‘fight election interference’ by interfering with elections. You either have freedom of speech and fair elections — or you don’t,” he wrote.
Following his 2024 arrest, which drew widespread condemnation from the crypto community and human rights activists, he became highly critical of the French government and the direction of the European Union.
France is inching toward societal collapse due to state censorship and the failed policies of the current government, he warned in June.
He also stated that Telegram will exit jurisdictions, including France, before compromising user privacy by handing over encryption keys or building a backdoor into the messaging platform for state surveillance.
Durov’s repeated warnings about state-led attacks against online free speech and privacy came to a head in 2025, when an EU proposal to monitor all chat messages, including encrypted user communications, gained support from 19 member nations of the EU.
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