Pavel Durov. Photo: Telegram

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov revealed that the French authorities attempted to censor channels on the messenger app he founded ahead of last year’s Moldovan presidential election on Sunday, as Moldovans headed to the polls for a key parliamentary election.

Referring to his arrest and subsequent bailing in France, Durov claimed that when he was “stuck in Paris” last year, the French intelligence services had reached out to him through an intermediary asking him “to help the Moldovan government censor certain Telegram channels ahead of the presidential elections”.

“After reviewing the channels flagged by French (and Moldovan) authorities, we identified a few that clearly violated our rules and removed them. ... 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,” Durov said, adding that Telegram had therefore refused to act on the second request.

According to Durov, the same intermediary had told him that, in exchange for his cooperation, the French intelligence services would “say good things” about him to the judge presiding over his case.

Durov said that if the intelligence services had indeed spoken to the judge on his behalf, it constituted “an attempt to interfere in the judicial process”, while if they had not and “merely claimed to have done so, then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe.”

At the time of the events, Durov was on bail in France, facing legal charges over Telegram’s alleged failure to crackdown on illicit financial transactions, the distribution of child pornography, drug trafficking, money laundering and organised crime, among others. He was subsequently given permission to leave France, however.

Moldova’s ruling Party of Solidarity and Action (PAS), led by pro-EU President Maia Sandu, won Sunday’s parliamentary election, seeing off the pro-Kremlin opposition amid fears of Russian interference. It was the first election since the presidential election and the referendum on European integration a year ago, which Sandu won by a small margin.