Pavel Durov has four citizenships, but he was detained as a French citizen. He received a passport of this country in August 2021: French authorities published an order granting citizenship to the founder of Telegram, although the document did not say why exactly Durov was given it. According to Le Monde, the entrepreneur “became” French through a “very rare and politicized procedure” that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs uses for celebrities to increase “France’s international influence.”
A few months earlier, in February, Durov became a citizen of the United Arab Emirates. He met with the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, but the goals and results of the meeting were not reported at the time. Durov has lived in Dubai since 2017, the same year he opened Telegram’s headquarters on the 23rd floor of one of the towers of the complex in the Dubai Media City free economic zone. He explained the decision to move by the lack of taxes and his reluctance to “work for the government 180 days a year.”
In 2013, Durov received citizenship of the island state of Saint Kitts and Nevis, which is located in the Caribbean Sea. According to him, he has never been there, but such a passport allows visa-free travel to the EU and the UK.
And in 2014, he called on people to stay in Russia, the country of his birth.
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