Russia Initiates Criminal Prosecution Against Durov, State Duma Recommends Citizens Stop Using Telegram Ecosystem Financial Services

TechFlow news, July 30. According to Bits.media, the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) has filed criminal charges against Telegram and TON founder Pavel Durov on the grounds of "assisting terrorist activities". The FSB investigation department has applied to the Moscow Lefortovo Court for his arrest in absentia and will seek an international wanted list and extradition. The FSB accused Telegram of refusing to delete channels, chats, and bots used by Ukrainian agents and extremist organizations. The direct trigger for the criminal case was a dating chat bot "Dayvincik/Leo" with over 13 million users; the FSB believes Ukrainian agents used it to disguise themselves as women to recruit Russian youth.

Sventsov, Vice Chairman of the Information Policy Committee of the State Duma of Russia, subsequently suggested that Russian citizens suspend all financial operations within the Telegram ecosystem, including paid subscriptions and purchasing TON/Gram tokens, and make further decisions after Roskomnadzor and FSB issue official statements.