Telegram founder Pavel Durov, in his first public comments since his arrest in France late last month, expressed surprise that he was interrogated and told by investigators that he "may be personally responsible for other people's illegal use" of the popular messaging app.
Durov said in a lengthy blog post that he was arrested and questioned for four days after arriving in in Paris because "the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram" regarding their complaints.
He was charged on August 28 with several crimes related to alleged illicit activity on the messaging app but avoided jail after posting a $5.5 million bail and was released on the condition that he remain in France and report to a police station twice a week.
French prosecutors accuse the 39-year-old Durov of complicity in allowing drug trafficking and the sharing of sexual images of children on Telegram, and of refusing to share documents demanded by authorities investigating illegal activity on the app.
But the Russian-born Durov -- who has citizenship in France as well as Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and the Caribbean archipelago of St. Kitts and Nevis -- said his arrest was "misguided."
SEE ALSO: The Dark Side Of Telegram"Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests," Durov wrote. "If a country is unhappy with an Internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself."
He denied any suggestion that the app is an "anarchic paradise" and defended efforts to monitor its 950 million users, saying that "we take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day."
Durov said Telegram also publishes daily transparency reports and that he had personally helped set up a hotline on Telegram to help the French authorities deal with the threat of terrorism.
"Sometimes we can’t agree with a country’s regulator on the right balance between privacy and security. In those cases, we are ready to leave that country," he wrote. He singled out Russia and Iran, where the encrypted app is a popular and safe means of communication among citizens and during protests, as places where Telegram was banned because it would not aid authorities' efforts to monitor users.
"When Russia demanded we hand over 'encryption keys' to enable surveillance, we refused -- and Telegram got banned in Russia. When Iran demanded we block channels of peaceful protesters, we refused -- and Telegram got banned in Iran. We are prepared to leave markets that aren’t compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money," Durov said.
He acknowledged that Telegram was "not perfect" and that "growing pains" had "made it easier for criminals to abuse the platform," but Durov said the app was driven by the "intention to bring good and defend the basic rights of people, particularly where these rights are violated."