The more anonymous, but no less important member of the telegram team, Nikolai Durov, recently grabbed people’s attention as French authorities have issued a warrant against him and his brother, Pavel Durov, politically and fishty the director of Telegram, ‘as published’ wrote I Politico ‘kissing them to run away’.
Well, Nikolai and Pavel are the people who founded the instant communication service. This application became popular due to its high level of data encryption and absolute refusal to respond to any requests from the authorities regarding ex-social network users.
Nikolai Durov: The man behind the curtain Born and raised in Russia, Nikolay Durov, is a mathematician and computer scientist with all the great school achievements under his belt. He possess a Ph D in mathematics and also is 3 times gold medalist of the International Mathematical Olympiad thus qualifies as a mathematician. As a result, when he appeared in polite society, bored people listened to him talk about his plans for ‘Telegram’. Politico mentions among the assets of this company such as Nikolai’s work on encryption of the social networks.
While Nikolai was the one who did engineering work at telegram, which is always less visible so he would be remained in the shadow as compared to his brother Pavel, who took a public-facing position, being the CEO. However, apart from that, his technical skills were very much needed in the development of Telegram that today has become what it is, almost 1 billion users all around the globe.
In contrast to Pavel, who tends to get a lot of publicity, Nikolai is a very reserved person who gets involved in the technical side of the platform, not elements of its business and PR.
The arrest warrants issued in France were in connection to the inquisition against Telegram which claimed that the service has been less willing to cooperate with a police investigation into child sexual exploitation – a specific charge that has attracted quite a bad press to both men.
There is no implication that Nikolai or Pavel partook in any of the illegal dealings under scrutiny, however, their dismissal to adhere to judicial demands have incurred heavy penalties.
The French authorities have leveled at Telegram demands, which in their words have remained “little to let non-existent” in response to even police request to assist investigation such as in the area of child”s abuse images crimes.
It is not known where Nikolai is at the moment, adding to the absurd turn of events in the ongoing court proceedings. Since his activity is of a very specific and technical nature, the chances are that his public appearance will not be as much as in his brother’s case. But the accusations against him are equally grave.
All the other jurisdictions including Russia and the UAE have shown plenty of interest in the case owing to how the Durov brothers rank amongst the global tech space.
