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The founder of Telegram, who was arrested by the police on Saturday, August 24, near Paris, was accompanied by a young woman who is a cryptocurrency expert at the time of his arrest.
Pavel Durov, whom we like to call the “Russian Mark Zuckerberg”, was arrested this week, August 24, at Le Bourget airport near Paris. The 39-year-old French-Russian billionaire is the founder of Telegram, an encrypted messaging service founded eleven years ago that he says has nearly 900 million users worldwide. But while the latter praise the “independence, respect for personal life and freedom” offered by the platform, Pavel Durov is criticized for not regulating and controlling some conversations, as well as many illegal actions. Known for his libertarian views, thus advocating absolute freedom of expression, the man censors nothing: drug trafficking networks, conspiratorial communities, and the distribution of child pornography. It is for this reason that the Juvenile Office of the National Directorate of the French Judicial Police (OFMIN) has issued an arrest warrant against him.
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Same place, same time
Since his arrest, the French press, incl RTL: reports that the entrepreneur, who returned from a visit to Azerbaijan, was accompanied by an “assistant and a bodyguard” at the time of his arrest. It will actually be his girlfriend, Julia Vavilova, according to Baptiste Robert, a renowned French cybersecurity expert and founder of the startup Predicta Lab. For two days, the specialist and the hacker continue to share the close ties between the young woman and the founder of Telegram with X. According to him, the latter was with Pavel Durov in the former Soviet republic during his stay in Azerbaijan. This is evidenced by several images posted on their respective social networks, which show that they were at the same tourist spots at the same time.
For example, on August 21, a video shows Pavel Durov improving his target shooting skills at a base in the country. On the same day, Yulia Vavilova published the identical sequence. The cybercrime expert went further, stating which 5-star hotel the couple will be staying at, the Four Seasons in Baku. “The funny thing is that he was happy to share his trip to Azerbaijan with his Instagram community and therefore posted a lot of videos,” joked Baptiste Robert under his shares. Before that, they were in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, we are still learning. “Conclusion. They went to great lengths not to appear together, but to challenge #OPSEC (operational security, editor’s note) is still difficult,” writes the hacker again. Screenshots taken by the latter in time, since the young woman stopped her social networks.
Cryptocurrency expert
On the website of the Indian TV channel NDTV, we also read that Julia Vavilova is a young cryptocurrency trainer, 24 years old. As a user of the Twitch platform, he explained in a video how he uses cryptocurrencies to circumvent his country’s sanctions. “When Russia was sanctioned, smart friends of mine, one of whom had educated me about crypto, advised me to send all cryptocurrencies to a fiat wallet (or alternative, editor’s note), he explained to his netizens.
Also an influencer, he previously had nearly 20,000 followers on Instagram, boasting that his interests are “gaming, crypto, languages, and open-mindedness.” So he would be fluent in English, Russian, Spanish and Arabic. According to his photos, he also lives most of the time in Dubai, the city in the United Arab Emirates where Telegram is headquartered. Also, according to NDTV, “his social media posts, including photos with Pavel Durov in Paris, have sparked speculation in the crypto community that he may have inadvertently or intentionally led authorities to their whereabouts.”
On So far, there is no official information about the identity and role of the young woman. AFP said only that his relatives have not heard from him so far.
Source: Le Figaro
