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The French intelligence service has denied allegations that it attempted to influence Romania’s presidential election by asking Telegram’s founder to ban conservative Romanian accounts from the platform.
Pavel Durov, the Russian-born Telegram founder, alleged that the head of France's Directorate General for External Security (DGSE) Nicolas Lerner asked him to censor conservative Romanian voices ahead of the election, which took place on Sunday.
“This spring at the Salon des Batailles in the Hôtel de Crillon, Nicolas Lerner, head of French intelligence, asked me to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections. I refused,” Durov said in a post on X.
He added that Telegram “didn't block protesters in Russia, Belarus, or Iran. We won't start doing it in Europe.”
France’s foreign ministry dismissed Durov’s claims, calling them “unfounded allegations,” and labeled them “merely a diversionary maneuver from the real threats of interference targeting Romania.”
It reminded that Romanian authorities annulled the first round of the Romanian presidential elections last December due to Russian interference that helped far-right candidate Cătălin Georgescu win. He was subsequently banned from running again and Romanian prosecutors launched criminal proceedings against him in February for using social media manipulation and bots to spread misinformation during the pre-election campaign to secure his victory.
“Subsequent investigations by Romanian authorities and the European Commission later confirmed the seriousness of these interferences, including regarding the manipulation of the TikTok algorithm,” France’s foreign ministry said.
Meanwhile, the French secret service, the DGSE, confirmed that officials did meet with Durov “on several occasions in recent years … to remind him firmly of his company's responsibilities,” to prevent terrorist and child pornography threats.
But Durov disputed the DGSE’s statement, saying that the secret service “never even mentioned” the child pornography issue. However, “they did want IPs of terror suspects in France, but their main focus was always geopolitics: Romania, Moldova, Ukraine,” he claimed.
Before naming the DGSE, Durov had previously accused a “Western European government” of requesting that he censor conservative voices in Romania on Telegram. He hinted at it being France by including a baguette emoji in his post.
The Kremlin commented on Monday on Durov's claims, saying that it is "not news" that EU countries would meddle in the internal affairs of other states.
“The fact that European countries — France, Great Britain, and Germany — interfere in the internal affairs of other countries is not news. These are just fragments that come to light,” said Dmitry Peskov, the Russian presidential press secretary.
This isn’t Durov’s first brush with the French authorities. Last August, French authorities detained him at an airport outside Paris and later charged him with allowing extremist and criminal content on Telegram. He was released on €5 million bail ($5.6 million) and allowed to temporarily leave France for Dubai in March. Durov returned to France in April, where he remains under formal investigation.
