The creator of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, states the over 100 kids he has fathered will divide his predicted $13.9bn (£10.3bn) fortune. They are all my children and will have the same rights! I don’t want them to destroy each other once I’ve gone,” said Mr Durov to French political magazine Le Point.
Mr Durov claimed to be the “official father” of six children by three different girlfriends, but the clinic “where I began donating sperm fifteen years ago to assist a friend, informed me that over 100 babies had been conceived in this manner in 12 countries.”
He also repeated that he had denied any misdeed in relation to severe criminal charges he is facing in France. The Russian tech billionaire who has isolated himself also revealed to the magazine that his children would have to wait 30 years before they could access their inheritance.
“I want them to live as normal people, to become something for themselves, to learn to trust themselves, to be able to create, not to depend on a bank account,” he said.
The 40-year-old explained that he had made a will now because his work was risky since “defending freedoms gets you plenty of enemies, including among mighty states”.
His messaging app, Telegram, which is famous for its commitment to privacy and end-to-end encryption, boasts over a billion monthly active users. Mr Durov also spoke about criminal proceedings in France, where he was arrested in the past year over allegations of not adequately moderating the app to decrease criminality.
He has also denied cooperating with law enforcement regarding drug trafficking, child sexual abuse material, and fraud. Telegram previously rejected accusations of having inadequate moderation.
In the interview for Le Point, he referred to the allegations as “totally absurd” Just because criminals use our messaging service among many others doesn’t make those who run it criminals,” he added.
Russian-born Mr Durov now lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based. He holds dual citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates. The founder of VKontakte said in 2014 that he had been fired from the Russian social network after refusing requests from the Kremlin to censor posts. He established Telegram in 2013, and the application is still widely used in Russia.
It permits groups with a membership of up to 200,000, which has been argued by critics makes it easier for disinformation to propagate, and for individuals to exchange conspiracist, neo-Nazi, paedophilic or terror-related content.
Earlier this year, Mr Durov defended Telegram’s track record on combating child abuse. Since 2018, Telegram has battled child abuse in numerous ways: content fingerprint bans, special moderation teams, NGO hotlines, and daily transparency reports on banned content – all auditable,” he posted on X.
“Implying Telegram did nothing to take down child porn as a fact is a manipulation technique. A Telegram representative explained to BBC News that the app was “not efficient for the promotion of dangerous content because it does not employ algorithms for sensational material promotion like other sites do”.
In the UK, the app was criticised for hosting far-right channels, which played a significant role in planning the English city violence last summer. Telegram did delete some groups, but otherwise, its moderation system for extremist and illegal content is far weaker than that of other social media platforms and messenger apps, cyber security experts say.
The app claims to have “removed all channels found distributing calls for violence” and denies that its moderation system is less robust than others. “This is false,” its representative replied. “Telegram’s moderation meets or exceeds all industry standards.”
“Telegram blocks hundreds of thousands of groups and channels every day and takes down millions of items of content that break its Terms of Service, such as inciting violence, posting child abuse content, and selling contraband,” the app states on its website.
