Pavel Durov was initially barred from leaving the country as part of a criminal probe \u00a0<\/p>\n
France has rescinded a travel ban on Telegram founder Pavel Durov, media outlets reported on Thursday, citing judicial sources.\u00a0
\nDurov was detained in Paris last year and charged with complicity in crimes linked to Telegram users, including extremism and child abuse \u2013 allegations the tech tycoon denied. He has claimed that during his detention he was asked by the head of the French secret service to censor conservative voices in Romania, ahead of a controversial presidential election later nullified by Bucharest. He was released on \u20ac5 million ($5.4 million) bail under judicial supervision. A judge barred him from leaving France during the probe.\u00a0
\nThe latest ruling, reportedly issued on November 10, fully lifts the travel ban and removes the requirement for him to report regularly to police. In June he obtained a partial easing of restrictions, allowing him to stay in the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram is based, for up to two weeks at a time.<\/p>\n
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Earlier this year, Durov said that arresting a CEO of a major platform over crimes committed by the platform\u2019s users was \u201clegally and logically absurd.\u201d
\n\u201cA year later, the \u2018criminal investigation\u2019 against me is still struggling to find anything that I or Telegram did wrong,\u201d he wrote in August, stressing that Telegram\u2019s moderation practices follow industry standards and that the company has complied with all legally binding requests from French authorities.
\nThe 41-year-old Russian-born entrepreneur holds French citizenship and has consistently denied the allegations, describing them as politically motivated. He accused French authorities of conducting \u201ca crusade\u201d against free speech.
\nHe has also criticized France more broadly, saying the country has damaged its reputation as a free society. The CEO has extended that criticism to the European Union, arguing that the bloc is imposing increasingly tighter censorship and media restrictions.
\nDurov has a net worth of $14.7 billion, having increased $3.71 billion since the start of the year, placing him in 196th place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pavel Durov was initially barred from leaving the country as part of a criminal probe \u00a0 France has rescinded a travel ban on Telegram founder Pavel Durov, media outlets reported…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t