A female influencer who was recently posting about a trip she’s suspected to have taken with Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has gone missing since Durov’s arrest over the weekend, the New York Post reports.
Juli Vavilova, 24, a video game streamer and “crypto coach,” cannot be located by her family after recently sharing photos of her suspected trip with Durov to Azerbaijan last week. Vavilova’s relationship with Durov is unclear, however, she shared numerous posts of herself traveling across the Middle East that matched the timeframe of his recent trips to the same locations.
Online sleuths believe that posts shared by Vavilova may have led to Durov’s arrest at Le Bourget Airport in Paris on Saturday (August 24). French authorities had previously issued a search warrant as part of a preliminary investigation into the billionaire and his Telegram application, which has more than 900 million active users globally, but the warrant was only valid once Durov landed on French soil.
“It’s complicated to say if her posts played a direct role in his arrest, but if you were following her on social media, you could easily track Durov’s movements,” said French privacy data researcher Baptiste Robert via the New York Post.
Law enforcement claimed that Telegram’s lack of moderation and tools offered, such as cryptocurrencies, make it complicit to incidents involving drug trafficking, pedophilia and fraud and acted quickly after Durov arrived in the country. Durov, 39, best known for founding Telegram and VK (VKontakte), lives in Dubai and has dual citizenship in the United Arab Emirates and France, according to Fortune.
The Russian billionaire fled his home country in 2014 after refusing to hand over encrypted user data to officials or silence communities opposing the Kremlin, which he later sold, one year after launching the popular application.
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