While he is in French custody, the billionaire Telegram CEO is also being prosecuted in Switzerland

Pavel Durov, the billionaire founder of the messaging app Telegram, who was arrested in France on Saturday, is also a suspect in criminal proceedings in Switzerland. Forbes has learned. The case was filed by his former partner Irina Bolgar, who claims to have three children with Durov. The criminal complaint, filed in Geneva in March 2023, alleges that Durov was physically violent toward one of his three children. Bolgar filed a civil custody suit shortly afterward; both cases were filed several months after Bolgar claimed Durov stopped paying her 150,000 euros ($167,500) a month in child support, court records say.

The Geneva court initially refused to admit the criminal complaint against Durov when it was received because it had been filed more than three months after the most recent case of alleged physical violence. In May 2023, Bolgar appealed, and the court allowed the case to continue last October. The case – which is still ongoing, according to a Geneva court official – alleges that Durov harmed his youngest son, born in September 2017, five times between 2021 and 2022. The incidents allegedly resulted in injuries, including a concussion and sleep disturbances; transcripts of messages Bolgar and Durov allegedly exchanged in Paris in November 2021 were admitted as evidence, as was a medical certificate from April 2023 attesting that the child continued to suffer from anxiety and had trouble sleeping as a result of the violence.

A representative for Durov declined to comment. A lawyer for Bolgar confirmed that Bolgar and their three children are involved in the civil case but declined to comment on the criminal complaint. Due to Swiss law, Durov, Bolgar and their children are not named in the criminal case, but there are several identifying details that confirm Durov's identity, including the year his children were born, the case number of the civil custody dispute, Durov's residency in the United Arab Emirates and a reference to his assets. Durov did not contest the custody dispute, which was decided in Bolgar's favor in May 2023 and confirmed in February 2024, according to Bolgar's lawyer. It is unclear whether he has hired a lawyer to file the criminal complaint. Bolgar's lawyer said Forbes In June 2024, she also filed a civil child support lawsuit against Durov, which is still pending.

Bolgar met the Telegram founder in 2012 when they were both living in Russia, she wrote on social media. Six months later, they moved to St. Petersburg, where their three children were born between 2013 and 2017. According to her Instagram account, she and Durov lived together in St. Petersburg until 2017. Durov founded Telegram in 2013 and claimed he left Russia in 2014 after refusing to provide Russian authorities with data on users of his social media site VKontakte. But according to the Russian investigative news portal iStoriesBetween 2015 and 2021 he returned more than 50 times.

Durov later obtained French citizenship and moved to Dubai in 2017. He is also a citizen of the United Arab Emirates and St. Kitts and Nevis. Durov's net worth is estimated at $15.5 billion. He lives in a luxury five-bedroom villa on a 15,000-square-meter plot on the Jumeirah Islands in Dubai, which he rents for about a million dollars a year.

Bolgar and Durov never married; since children born out of wedlock were not legally recognized in the UAE at the time, Bolgar and her three children remained in Russia, according to one of Bolgar's Instagram posts. According to the criminal case, Durov and Bolgar separated in late 2018 and Durov agreed in writing to pay Bolgar €150,000 a month in child support. In 2019, Bolgar and the children moved to Latvia before leaving for Switzerland in 2020. She and her children continued to meet with Durov in the years after their separation, meeting in Switzerland, Dubai and other countries, according to an Instagram post.

In court documents, Bolgar claims Durov stopped seeing their children in September 2022 and “blocked” access to the 150,000 euros in child support payments around the same time. According to the lawsuit, Bolgar, who is a lawyer according to her social media, has since relied on her monthly salary of 8,000 Swiss francs ($9,500) to support the children. In April 2023, she filed a lawsuit in a civil court in Geneva seeking sole custody of the children. The court awarded Bolgar sole custody of her children along with Durov and suspended his personal rights to the children, first in May 2023 and again in February 2024. He never appears to have responded to the court or hired a lawyer.

Forbes Russia The authenticity of the children's paternity certificates was verified by the Geneva-based translator that Bolgar had used when she moved to Switzerland. Forbes In addition, photocopies of the documents and their translations were examined, which show Durov's full name and date of birth, including his middle name and place of birth.

While Durov has yet to acknowledge these three children, he posted on Telegram in July that he has more than 100 biological children through the donation of his sperm. He also reportedly has two older children from a previous relationship. A day after Durov's Telegram post, Bolgar began posting publicly on Instagram about her children and her relationship with Durov.

The case in Switzerland is ongoing as Durov remains in police custody in France, where he was arrested on Saturday evening at Le Bourget airport outside Paris after arriving on a private jet from Baku, Azerbaijan. In a statement issued with ForbesLaure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor in charge of the case, said Durov was taken into custody as part of a judicial investigation opened on July 8, 2024 by JUNALCO, the national unit for combating organized crime and cybercrime. He faces 12 charges, including aiding and abetting the management of an online platform to facilitate illegal transactions, distribution of child pornography, sale of narcotics, fraud and money laundering. On Sunday, his pre-trial detention was extended by up to 96 hours, meaning he can be held until Wednesday, August 28, before being charged or released.

The allegations of child pornography related to Telegram appear to be at the heart of the investigation. “At the heart of this case is the lack of moderation and cooperation from [Telegram] (with nearly 1 billion users), particularly in the fight against paedophilia,” wrote Jean-Michel Bernigaud, secretary general of OFMIN, the French agency for the prevention of violence against minors, in a LinkedIn post on Monday.

In a statement posted on Telegram on Sunday, the company said it “complies with EU laws” and that Durov “has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe.” The company is “waiting for a speedy resolution of this situation.”