Pavel Durov from Telegram, accused of crimes range, can leave France

Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging application, which was accused in France last year of a variety of crimes related to the illegal activity in the application, has been allowed to temporarily abandon the country.

Mr. Durov had been forbidden to leave France, but the Paris prosecutor's office said Monday that the investigative judges who handled their case had raised travel restrictions between March 15 and April 7, when he must return to France.

“I returned to Dubai after spending several months in France due to an investigation related to the activity of criminals in Telegram,” said Mr. Durov, a businessman born in Russia who also has citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates. “The process is ongoing, but it feels great to be at home.”

Mr. Durov, 40, was arrested near Paris last August and forbade leaving the country while under investigation. It was a rare movement of the French legal authorities, who personally accused him of complicity when executing an online platform considered as enabling illegal activities. After being released from custody last year, he was asked to register at a police station twice a week.

Mr. Durov faces a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison. He was also accused of complicity in crimes such as allowing the distribution of child sexual abuse, drug trafficking and fraud and refusing to cooperate with the police.

Mr. Durov has criticized the French authorities for the arrest, saying that it cannot be personally responsible for what users publish on Telegram. But the company has made several changes since August to monitor its platform and be more cooperative with the agencies of application of the law worldwide.

“When it comes to moderation, cooperation and fight against crime, for years the telegram not only fulfilled but also exceeded its legal obligations,” Durov said on Monday.

Telegram, which Mr. Durov founded in 2013, says he has more than one billion users. His low supervision of the content generated by users has made it popular among people living under authoritarian governments, but lax supervision has also allowed the hateful rhetoric and harmful content to be festive.

The French case fueled an international debate on freedom of expression on the Internet and the responsibility of technology companies to monitor the discourse and actions of the users of the platform. Some governments, especially in the European Union, are increasingly analyzing technological companies and pressing them to address child safety, terrorism, misinformation and spread of other harmful content.

In France, Telegram has been involved in multiple criminal cases linked to child sexual abuse, drug trafficking and virtual hate crimes. The best prosecutor in Paris, Laure Beccuau, last year, said the organization demonstrated an “almost total absence” of response when asked to cooperate with the police.

Mr. Durav is among a small but growing list of high -level technological figures that have been accused of crimes committed by users of their platforms, including Ross W. Ulbricht, the creator of the virtual black market of the Silk route, and Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, who declared the fault last year to the rapes of the United States for money that took place on his platform CRISPPERTING.

President Trump forgave Mr. Ulbricht in January.

Aurelien Breeden Paris contributed reports.