A Russian Elon Musk with 100 biological children: Meet Pavel Durov

Paris (CNN) — Pavel Durov is a lot of things to a lot of people. Programming prodigy. Billionaire entrepreneur. Kremlin stooge. Free-speech fighter. Biological father to at least 100 kids.

Durov, the elusive founder of Telegram who was detained in France over the weekend, cuts the figure of a mysterious, globe-trotting tech bro with Mark Zuckerberg’s prodigiousness, Jack Dorsey’s bizarre lifestyle habits and Elon Musk’s libertarian streak – plus a similar obsession with pronatalism and fathering children. Durov said in July that he had fathered more than 100 children thanks to sperm donations he had made over the past 15 years.

Worth an estimated $9.15 billion according to Bloomberg and armed with an array of passports and residences, Durov has for a decade lived a life without borders, a man on an often-shirtless journey to secure the freedom of communication from the prying eyes of governments, democratically elected or otherwise.

Now, Durov’s legal trouble is drudging up an old debate, pitting Telegram’s end-to-end encryption, which keeps communications between users secure even from the company’s employees, against the security concerns of various governments and the European Union’s campaign to rein in big tech.

A pair of prodigies

Durov was born in 1984 in the Soviet Union but moved to Italy when he was a 4-year-old, the tech entrepreneur told right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson in a rare interview earlier this year. The family moved back to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, after Durov’s father received an offer to work at St. Petersburg State University.

Durov said he and his older brother, Nikolai, were math prodigies from an early age. The elder Durov was the bigger star when the duo were children. Durov said his brother went on Italian TV to solve cubic equations in real time as a child and won repeated gold medals at the International Math Olympiad. The younger Durov was the best student at his school and competed locally.

“We were both very passionate about coding and designing stuff,” Durov said.

He said that when the family returned to Russia, they brought back from Italy an IBM PC XT computer, meaning they were “in the early 90s, one of the few families in Russia who could actually teach ourselves how to program.”

Russia’s Zuck

Durov’s coding prowess and entrepreneurial spirit led him to build Vkontakte (VK), a social media site, in 2006, when he was a 21-year-old fresh out of university. VK quickly became known as the Facebook of Russia, and Durov the country’s answer to Mark Zuckerberg.

But Durov’s relationship with the Kremlin turned adversarial much quicker than Zuckerberg’s did with Washington.

When protesters began using VK to organize demonstrations in Kyiv against Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovich, in 2013, Durov said the Kremlin asked the site to hand over private data of Ukrainian users.

“We decided to refuse, and that didn’t go too well with the Russian government,” Durov told Carlson.

That decision sealed Durov’s fate at the company. Durov would later resign as CEO, opening the door for people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin to take over. The entrepreneur sold all his shares for millions and then left Russia. Today, VK is under state control.

“For me, it was never about becoming rich. Everything in my life was about becoming free. To the extent that is possible, my mission in life is to allow other people to become free,” Durov said.

“I don’t want to take orders from anyone.”

‘All of them suck’

While Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp in his bid to build the social media empire now known as Meta, Durov chose to build his own messaging app despite an already crowded marketplace for such platforms.

He didn’t think anything out there was good enough.

“It doesn’t matter how many messaging apps are out there if all of them suck,” Durov told TechCrunch in 2015.

Durov said that his experience with the Kremlin was a key motivator in creating Telegram, which is now based in Dubai. He and his brother wanted to build something that would be free from the prying eyes of government.

The company’s strong end-to-end encryption and much-hyped commitment to privacy proved attractive to the hundreds of millions of users who flocked to Telegram – including, eventually, the terrorists who planned the Paris terror attacks in November 2015.

The revelation prompted the normally private Durov to go on a public relations blitz, conducting a bevy of interviews, including one with CNN, to assure a wary public that Telegram was not becoming WhatsApp for terrorists.

Telegram, according to Durov, was simply the most secure messaging platform on the market – and compromising by creating a back door for governments would undermine the app’s appeal and the company’s commitment to privacy.

“You cannot make it safe against criminals and open for governments,” Durov told CNN in 2016. “It’s either secure or not secure.”

Kremlin questions

Telegram’s refusal to budge on decryption put it at loggerheads with governments around the world – including Russia, at least initially.

Moscow in 2018 attempted to ban Telegram for refusing to supply Russian security services with decryption keys. Durov vowed to defy the ban.

Another showdown between the tech entrepreneur and the Kremlin appeared to be on the horizon, but nothing came of it. The ban was lifted in 2020.

In the years that followed, Telegram became one of the few foreign social media platforms operating in Russia without restrictions. It is now the preferred means of official communication for many officials in the Russian government.

Durov’s critics have long questioned whether Telegram could operate so freely in Russia without having made some sort of concession to the Kremlin, allegations Durov has repeatedly batted down – often pointing to his spat in the early 2010s that led him to leave Russia. In a statement sent to CNN, Telegram denied any arrangements were made with the Kremlin to encourage the app’s unbanning in Russia.

Before he was detained in Paris, Durov was in Azerbaijan at the same time as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was in the country on an official two-day visit. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the two did not meet.

And though Durov has publicly turned his back on Russia, the government was quick to begin working on Durov’s behalf after his detention. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Russian Embassy in Paris “immediately got down to work” after getting word of Durov’s legal troubles.

The issue of Telegram’s abuse by money launderers, drug traffickers and people spreading pedophilia has continued to unsettle Western governments. Durov’s detention in France was connected to a warrant related to Telegram’s lack of moderation, according to CNN-affiliate BFMTV.

Telegram responded in a statement that “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.” The statement added that Telegram abides by EU laws and that Durov had nothing to hide.

CNN’s Nathan Hodge contributed to this report

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This story has been updated with additional details.