Importantly, with its development based in Dubai and St Petersburg, Telegram isn’t an American company. For prosecutors, both inside and outside of the US, that has become an issue.

Should the authorities want to grab metadata such as the IP address of a specific user on a social media, messaging or email platform, companies registered in the US and many other countries are required by law to comply with that request. That covers companies such as Meta, X, Google, Apple and Microsoft.

The French charges allege that Telegram, in contrast, hasn’t been cooperating with similar requests sent to Dubai. If that reflects Durov’s outlook, it has turned out to be a misjudgement.