Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticized the European Union for suppressing free speech on social media, while also referring to France's criminal investigation against him, Azernews reports.
"The EU imposes impossible rules so it can punish tech firms that refuse to silently censor free speech. We saw the same in France: a baseless “criminal investigation”, then intelligence services offering to help with it if Telegram quietly censored speech in Romania and Moldova," he wrote. Durov replied to a post by billionaire and X Corp. founder Elon Musk from 2024 in which he said he refused the EU's "illegal secret deal" to censor free speech.
Earlier this year, Durov accused France's spy agency of asking him to suppress "conservative voices in Romania" during that country's presidential election campaign. Paris, however, had denied the claim.
