The bodyguard of Telegram boss Pavel Durov, indicted in France, is Romanian and accompanied him when he returned to Paris, where he was immediately detained. There are revelations made by the French TV channel TF1, which presents the behind the scenes of the arrest of the 39-year-old Russian billionaire, indicted in France and placed under judicial control for 12 crimes.
Durov is the subject of a separate procedure in France, under investigation, for violence against his children. The complaint was made by his former partner, Irina Bolgar, who lives in Switzerland and claims that she has three children with the founder of Telegram.
French investigators tracked his private jet for months. They analyzed his lifestyle, his surroundings and the places he frequented. In March, a judge issued a search warrant and Durov was put on the wanted list. In the morning of August 24, the police went on alert: he was registered with a flight from Baku to Paris. He got off the plane and, together with his assistant and the Romanian bodyguard, sat in the VIP lounge of Le Bourget airport, for identity verification. The billionaire was stunned when border officials told him he was in police custody from then on. The nurse and the bodyguard were not arrested. They were also interrogated, without charges being brought against them. Investigators say the Russian was sometimes arrogant and knew only a few words of French, although he has French citizenship since 2021.
When he got off the plane, nothing seemed out of the ordinary for the billionaire, reports TF1 quoted by News.ro. With no policeman in sight, Pavel Durov gathers his bags and heads to the VIP lounge of Le Bourget airport. Next to him is his assistant (who is very active on Instagram, posting photos from his travels with Durov) and his Romanian bodyguard.
The three sat down in the lounge usually reserved for VIPs for identity verification. The first PAF (Border Police) officers arrived. Officials invited them upstairs. At this moment the “trap” was triggered.
The police informed him of his rights and stated that he is currently in police custody. “He couldn’t believe it,” a source commented. His nurse and bodyguard were exempted from police custody. However, they were freely questioned during the investigation, but no charges were brought against them.
Before spending almost ninety hours in the premises of the ONAF (National Anti-Fraud Office), Pavel Durov asked to be announced the French billionaire Xavier Niel, a prominent personality of French technology. Contacted by TF1, Niel has not yet responded for comment. When he spoke to investigators, Pavel Durov, a native of St. Petersburg, was sometimes “arrogant” and sometimes “offhand.” Apart from his mother tongue, Russian, and a few words in French, the Telegram boss is bilingual in English and Italian. He explained that he came to France “to meet Emmanuel Macron”, a statement that Emmanuel Macron’s entourage denied to TF1-LCI.
Pavel Durov can no longer leave France. He is now under severe judicial control, which requires him to post a bail of five million euros and report to the police station twice a week.
Domestic violence charges
Recently, Irina Bolgar, a 44-year-old Russian woman settled in Switzerland, claimed that Pavel Durov is the father of her daughter and the two boys born in 2013, 2016 and 2017, insisting that they were “conceived and born naturally”. On July 23, 2024, Irina Bolgar contacted Forbes and presented documents showing that she is the mother of Pavel Durov’s three children, also providing a family photo of Durov taken in 2020. Forbes confirmed the authenticity of the documents.
In August 2024, Bolgar filed a lawsuit against Durov in Switzerland. She alleged that Durov abused her youngest son five times between 2021 and 2022 and that Durov stopped seeing the children in September 2022. The lawsuit was filed months after Durov, according to Bolgar, stopped paying her alimony of 150,000 euros per month.
In an interview, Durov claimed to have fathered more than 100 children through sperm donation in 12 countries since 2010.
According to Forbes, Durov has two children with his ex-wife Daria Bondarenko: daughter Alina (born in 2009) and son Mihail (born in 2010). Durov met Daria Bondarenko while studying at the university. In 2021, she was living in Barcelona.