The secretive and elitist awarding of French nationality to Pavel Durov

OnOn August 24th, Telegram boss Pavel Durov was arrested on his arrival at Paris’s Le Bourget airport and held in police custody for questioning before being placed under investigation by a magistrate and released on bail, set at 5 million euros, four days later. He is also barred from leaving France, and is required to present himself to a police station twice per week.

The case against him is over criminal activity allegedly abetted by Telegram’s lack of content moderation of exchanges and posts on the encrypted messaging app, and notably by those involved in paedo-pornography, drug trafficking and fraud. As head of the company, he is also targeted by accusations of failing to respond to requests for cooperation by police and justice officials over the criminals’ use of Telegram.

Russian-born Durov, 39, who had flown into Paris from Azerbaijan, is also the subject of a separate investigation into accusations by his former partner that he was repeatedly violent towards one of her sons. 

But beyond the various accusations, his surprise arrest has also brought back to light the fact that he was awarded French citizenship in 2021, raising a number of questions over the process. First revealed by French daily Le Monde in 2023, the story of his naturalisation has been largely overlooked since. It brought his total number of passports to four: one is that of his native Russia, another was issued by the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean tax haven, and another by the United Arab Emirates, where he resides and where his business is based.

While the awarding of French nationality to Durov was published in the official gazette of legal announcements, the Journal Officiel, in August 2021, and while it was by a decree issued in May 2022 that he was also allowed to legally use a Frenchified version of his name – Paul du Rove –, the French government has remained tight-lipped about both events, consistently refusing to answer questions on the subject.

Ordinarily, foreigners may obtain French nationality under strict conditions. These include that the individual has resided in France for a period of several years, that they speak and understand the French language, that they uphold good moral standards and have good knowledge of the history of France.

But Pavel Durov, who is based, along with his company, in Dubai, benefitted from an exceptional process called “citoyenneté émérite” as set out in Article 21-21 of the civil code. The word “émérite” is employed here in its sense of “exceptional”. The law defines the conditions for receiving “citoyenneté émérite” as follows: “French nationality can be awarded by naturalisation, on the proposal of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to any Francophone foreigner who requests it and who contributes by their exceptional actions to the radiance of the influence of France, and to the prosperity of its international economic relations.

According to Le Monde, Durov met with French President Emmanuel Macron “on several occasions” during discreet appointments that were not entered into the president’s official agenda. It appears likely that, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, it was during a lunch meeting in 2018 that Durov requested French nationality, when the idea of setting up Telegram’s headquarters in France was raised.

Questioned last week during his visit to Serbia, Macron said that he was happy to recognise his involvement in awarding French nationality to Durov. “I did it for Mr Durov, who moreover took the trouble to learn the French language, just as I did for American entrepreneur Evan Spiegel [Editor’s note: co-founder of messaging app Snapchat], as I did for actors, sports figures, and I think it’s good for our country,” he said. “It’s a very good thing, and I’ll continue to do it.”

Above: Emmanuel Macron, during his visit to Serbia last week, speaking about Pavel Durov.

But also according to Le Monde, the president and his prime minister – the only person allowed to sign off the awarding of a “citoyenneté émérite” – ignored the opinion of the French foreign affairs ministry, which was the first administration to consider the request put in by Durov via the French consulate in Dubai. The ministry considered that the “conditions” for handing Durov French nationality “were not met”.

There is also the question of whether Durov was really Francophone, and in what way had he contributed to spreading France’s influence in the world, as required for a “citoyenneté émérite”.

In the summer of 2016, the then French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, speaking on the occasion of a meeting with his German counterpart Thomas de Maizière, accused Telegram of having contributed, through its principle of not policing activity on the app, to the organisation of the jihadist terror attacks in Paris one year earlier.

Two days after the November 13th 2015 attacks in the French capital, which claimed the lives of 130 people and left more than 400 wounded, Durov took to Facebook to accuse the French government of being “as responsible” for the horrific events as the so-called Islamic State group (aka ISIS) in whose name they were carried out. He wrote: “I think the French government is as responsible as ISIS for this, because it is their policies and carelessness which eventually led to the tragedy. They take money away from hardworking people of France with outrageously high taxes and spend them on waging useless wars in the Middle East and on creating parasitic social paradise for North African immigrants. It is a disgrace to see Paris in the hands of short-sighted socialists who ruin this beautiful place. I hope they and their policies go away forever and this city will once again shine in its full glory – safe, rich and beautiful. Vive la France!”

Contacted by Mediapart, a spokesman for the French foreign affairs ministry declined to discuss the awarding of French nationality to Durov, saying that “the ministry of foreign affairs does not comment on individual situations of people who have gone through this procedure”, but added that “Pavel Durov has a level of French”. Asked what he meant by that, the spokesman said: “He is not bilingual, but he manages to speak French.”

What is clear is that the billionaire is not francophone, but obtained a “B1 certificate” of knowledge of the French language – i.e. a basic understanding of the tongue – as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL), and which was issued shortly before he was given French citizenship.

Asked how many foreign nationals have received the “citoyenneté émérite” and who they are, the foreign affairs ministry advised Mediapart to contact the interior ministry. Contacted, the latter referred Mediapart to article 21-21 of the civil code.

Jules Lepoutre, a lecturer at the Côte d’Azur university in Nice and specialised in public law, said article 21-21 dated from 1993, and was an amendment voted in the Senate to legislation passed that year reforming conditions for obtaining French nationality. Since then, said Lepoutre, “we never heard much about this measure except when the Snapchat creator Evan Spiegel and his son, who never resided in France, saw themselves given French nationality in 2018”.

According to the financial daily Les Echos, between “ten and 20” candidates for receiving the “citoyenneté émérite” are considered each year, and are rarely identified in public. One who was is the US author Jonathan Littell, who wrote his 2006 novel Les Bienveillantes (published in English under the title The Kindly Ones) in French (and which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt and the Prix de l’Académie française literary prizes). Another, according to the magazine Marianne, is Mamadou Gassama, a young Malian immigrant who in 2018 climbed the façade of a Paris apartment block to rescue a four-year-old boy who was hanging from a fourth-floor balcony after falling from the one above. At the time, Gassama did not have legal residence status in France.

Similarly, South African rugby player Maks van Dyk was naturalised French via article 21-21 in 2019, when he played for the club Stade Toulousain, as was also, in 2022, Cameroonian basketball professional Joel Embiid. The latter announced he would play in the French team at the Paris 2024 Olympic games, and even received a phone call from Emmanuel Macron to ensure that he would. However, he finally decided to play for the US national team after also receiving American nationality in 2022.

Before Macron was elected as president in 2017, his predecessor, François Hollande, said that under his presidency the interior ministry intervened to award by decree French nationality to Lassana Bathily, a Malian Muslim who worked as a shop assistant at a Paris kosher food store and saved a number of hostages taken there during an attack by a jihadist gunman in January 2015. Hollande told Mediapart: “I have no recollection of having intervened for the boss of a company in the internet field, nor for any other person.”

Unlike the Russian tech boss, lower profile foreigners who seek French nationality meet increasing difficulties, both through more demanding administrative requirements and also the greater powers given to prefects (the regional representatives of central government) to refuse applicants.  Since the 2007-2012 presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, and with the exception of François Hollande’s 2012-2017 term in office, the yearly numbers of naturalisations have steadily fallen. They numbered 62,000 in 2007, 43,000 in 2012, and 39,000 in 2023.

An exception is made for those foreigners who are considered to be heroes, like Mamadou Gassama and Lassana Bathily, and close to 25,000 foreign nationals who were frontline workers during the Covid-19 crisis, including healthcare workers, shopworkers, and rubbish collectors, were awarded French nationality between 2021 and 2023. But these heroes, unlike the bosses of Snapchat and Telegram, are mostly Francophone, are resident in France and very often have already sent in an application for naturalisation.

“It’s the paradigm of selective immigration,” said Jules Lepoutre of the case of Pavel Durov, which he said was “shocking”, adding: “In a snap of the finger, a foreigner who has not much to do with France is transformed into a national, while the cases of foreigners who live in France since a long time are refused because their spelling or their mastery of the French language, or of the history of France, is not perfect.”

“Does one have the right to be in a humdrum situation, to have never carried out an act of bravery but to have simply worked and brought up one’s children?” asked Lepoutre. “Nothing is demanded of French people who are such since their birth, by virtue of parentage. It is therefore not absurd, in the case of people who have been in the country since very long ago, who live, work and raise children in it, that they are factually French, [and] that naturalisation comes in recognition of this integration.”

During the 2024 Paralympics in Paris, Afghan taekwondo athlete Zakia Khudadadi, who fled her home country after the Taliban seized power in 2021, won a bronze medal on August 29th for the Refugee Paralympic Team which she represented. Having moved to France three years ago, her application for French nationality is still being processed, according to a French foreign affairs ministry spokesman. That delay highlights the arbitrary nature of certain “citoyenneté émérite” awards.

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• The original French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Graham Tearse