00:00Today on Forbes, Telegram billionaire, who was arrested in France, faces unrelated criminal
00:06complaint in Switzerland.
00:09Pavel Durov, the billionaire CEO and founder of messaging app Telegram, was arrested in
00:14France last weekend and charged Wednesday with a number of crimes related to illicit
00:19activity on his messaging app, including being complicit in managing an online platform to
00:24enable illegal transactions and not cooperating with law enforcement.
00:29Now it turns out, Durov is also a suspect in a criminal case in Switzerland, Forbes
00:34has learned.
00:36The case was filed by his former partner, Irina Bolgar, who claims to have three children
00:40with Durov.
00:42The criminal complaint in Geneva, filed in March 2023, alleges that Durov was physically
00:48violent towards one of his three children.
00:51Bolgar filed a civil child custody case shortly after.
00:55Both cases were submitted a few months after Bolgar alleges Durov stopped paying her 150,000
01:00euros, or about $167,500 per month, in child support, according to court filings.
01:08The Geneva Public Prosecutor's Office initially refused to enter the criminal complaint against
01:13Durov when it received it because it had been filed more than three months after the most
01:17recent instance of alleged physical violence.
01:21In May 2023, Bolgar appealed, and the court allowed the case to move forward last October.
01:27The case, which is ongoing, according to a Geneva court official, alleges that Durov
01:32harmed his youngest son, born in September 2017, five times between 2021 and 2022.
01:40The incidents allegedly resulted in injuries including a concussion and sleep disorders.
01:45Transcripts of messages purportedly exchanged by Bolgar and Durov in November 2021 in Paris
01:51were entered as evidence, as was a medical certificate from April 2023 attesting that
01:56the child continued to suffer from anxiety and had trouble sleeping due to the alleged violence.
02:03A representative for Durov declined to comment.
02:06A lawyer for Bolgar confirmed that Bolgar and her three children are involved in the
02:09civil case, but declined to comment on the criminal complaint.
02:13Because of Swiss laws, Durov, Bolgar, and their children are not named in the criminal
02:19But there are several identifying details that confirm Durov's identity, including his
02:23children's birth years, the case number of the civil child custody case, Durov's residence
02:28in the United Arab Emirates, and a reference to his net worth.
02:33Durov did not contest the child custody case, which was decided in Bolgar's favor in May
02:372023 and reaffirmed in February 2024, according to Bolgar's lawyer.
02:44Bolgar met the Telegram founder in 2012 when they were both living in Russia, according
02:48to what she wrote on social media.
02:51Six months later, they moved to St. Petersburg, where their three children were born between
02:552013 and 2017.
02:58According to her Instagram, she and Durov lived together in St. Petersburg until 2017.
03:03Durov founded Telegram in 2013 and claimed that he left Russia in 2014 after refusing
03:09to provide data on users of his social media site VK to Russian officials.
03:15Durov later gained French citizenship and moved to Dubai in 2017.
03:19He is also a citizen of the United Arab Emirates and St. Kitts and Nevis.
03:24Worth an estimated $15.5 billion, Durov lives in a luxury five-bedroom villa on a 15,000
03:31square foot property in Dubai's Jumeirah Islands, which he rents for about $1 million a year.
03:38Bolgar and Durov never married.
03:40Because children born outside of marriage were not legally recognized in the UAE at
03:44the time, Bolgar and their three children stayed in Russia, according to one of Bolgar's
03:48Instagram posts.
03:50According to the criminal case, Durov and Bolgar separated at the end of 2018, and Durov
03:55committed in writing that he would pay Bolgar monthly child support of €150,000.
04:02Forbes Russia verified the authenticity of the children's paternity documents with the
04:06Geneva-based translator used by Bolgar when she moved to Switzerland.
04:10Forbes also viewed photocopies of the documents and their translations, which state Durov's
04:15full name and date of birth, including his middle name and place of birth.
04:20While Durov has yet to acknowledge these three children, he posted on Telegram in July that
04:25he is more than 100 biological children from donating his sperm.
04:30For full coverage, check out Phoebe Liu and Giacomo Tognini's piece on Forbes.com.
04:37This is Ciaran Meadows from Forbes.
04:39Thanks for tuning in.
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