Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram platform, owes his August 24 arrest by French authorities in no small part to the proliferation of sexual images of the exploitation of minors on his channels. This rapid growth was monitored by investigators from the center for the fight against digital crime, the Gendarmerie's elite cybercrime unit.
The same type of images, circulating on the same platform, and the same investigation service are at the heart of a major trial for trafficking such content, which opens on Tuesday, September 24, before the Paris Magistrates' Court.
In 2023, using false identities, the gendarmes traced channels such as "Zineb chat gang," "Ambigüe," "Vidéos2ados" and "No Limit," and dismantled a network of "dealers" of "CP" – for Child Pornography, the insider name for these files. The findings, which Le Monde has been able to consult, offer a gripping insight into the workings of a network that leads men of all ages, including teenagers, from "ordinary" pornography to the consumption of images and videos of child rape, images that are bought, resold or exchanged without ever thinking about the conditions of their production.
Perhaps the worst of these channels was "No Limit," a supermarket of the extreme: Nazi iconography, videos of torture or murder, and above all, child pornography. At the head of this ultraviolent catch-all was an alias: "Vladimir Putin," "Vlad" or "The Russian," who runs half a dozen similar channels and makes money from his catalog. Hidden behind this pseudonym was Romain F., who was arrested in February at his mother's home in Morbihan, Brittany.
The 39-year-old drug addict, who suffers from psychiatric disorders, is a multi-recidivist. He was already indicted in 2022 and 2024 for possession of child pornography images, but this did not deter him. In front of the gendarmes, "Vlad," who lives on the disabled adult allowance, confessed to being behind some 20 Telegram groups. His interrogation painted a picture of a kind of "hikikomori," named after the Japanese teenagers who live in seclusion at home, a concept later imported to Europe. Crippled by phobia, Romain F. never leaves his home, consumes massive doses of cannabis and spends his day between consoles, computers and telephones.
He has had no difficulty in admitting that, since 2020, he has made a living by reselling hundreds of links to "packs" of child pornography content, sold for between €20 and €100 depending on their size, which would have earned him around €60,000, spent mainly "on Uber Eats and video games," according to his statements. In police custody, his difficulty lay not so much in admitting the facts, as in remembering the too many groups he has launched or administered. According to him, his motive was not sexual but financial. What did he think of the fact that so many people buy content from him? "It's shocking," he said. Scrawny and reclusive, "sad and depressed," according to his mother, Romain F. has become a charismatic leader on Telegram, directing with an iron fist the "KGB," the team of moderators for his main channel, "No Limit," who call him "chief" in their conversations.
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