Pavel Durov biography, height, net worth, girlfriend, children, arrest in France 2024

Biography of Pavel Durov

Pavel Durov is a programmer, founder of the largest Russian-speaking social network "VKontakte," and its director from 2006 to 2014.

Founder of VKontakte and Telegram Pavel Durov

By 2011, Pavel's capital was estimated at 7.9 billion rubles. Durov ranked 350th among the richest people in Russia. At that time, the value of the social network "VKontakte" was estimated at 1.5 billion dollars.

In 2013, he introduced users to the Telegram messenger with unique encryption technology. After being removed from his position at "VKontakte" in 2014, he left Russia and continued to develop Telegram. Forbes magazine estimates his net worth at $15.5 billion.

Childhood and Education

Pavel Valeryevich Durov was born on October 10, 1984, into an intellectual Leningrad family. His father, Valery Semenovich Durov, is a Doctor of Philology and the head of the Department of Classical Philology at St. Petersburg State University. Nikolai Valeryevich, Pavel Durov’s older brother, became the absolute world champion in programming among students twice.

Pavel started school in Turin, where his father worked for several years. The family soon returned to Russia, and after a short time in a general education school, Pavel enrolled in the Academic Gymnasium at St. Petersburg State University.

Durov studied in a class with an advanced curriculum in four foreign languages. He sat in the front row due to vision problems. From the age of 11, he became interested in programming, creating his first programs with his brother.

He became known for his school pranks involving hacking computer networks: out of boredom, Pavel changed screensavers on all the computers in the computer science classroom and easily hacked the passwords set by teachers.

After graduating with honors from the Academic Gymnasium, Durov entered the Faculty of Philology at St. Petersburg State University, specializing in English Philology and Translation.

Pavel Durov has a passion for languages: "Learn foreign languages. It will incredibly expand your perception of the world and open up unseen opportunities for learning, development, and career growth," he once advised his readers on his VKontakte page. There, he also listed the languages he knows: besides English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, he knows Latin and Persian.

This is what Pavel Durov looked like before he became famous

During his university studies, he repeatedly won competitions in linguistics, programming, and design. He was a recipient of scholarships from the Government of the Russian Federation, the President of the Russian Federation, and for three consecutive years, he was a laureate of the Potanin Prize.

He underwent military training in the specialty of "Propaganda and Psychological Warfare" and served as the platoon commander of the Philological Faculty. He graduated from military training with the rank of reserve lieutenant. In 2006, he graduated with honors from the Faculty of Philology, but has yet to collect his diploma from the university.

Creation of VKontakte

While still a student, Durov began compiling a database of study materials for humanities students, which was located at durov.com. He wanted to unite students from different campuses through a convenient virtual communication resource, leading to the creation of the forum of SPbGU. Each user's personal account included fields for name and surname, faculty, list of friends and groups, and the ability to blog. To promote the site, Durov organized beauty and design contests within the university.

This is how the ancestor of VKontakte looked like

One day, Durov received a message from his old friend Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, who was studying in the States. He observed the rapid growth of Mark Zuckerberg's social network Facebook and shared his insights with Pavel. Together, they discussed the idea of creating a Russian-language social network. They borrowed money for the project from Vyacheslav's father. The founders of the company were Pavel Durov and his friend Lev Leviev.

In September 2006, the social network VKontakte was launched. The founders borrowed its appearance from Mark Zuckerberg's creation. Nikolai Durov helped the budding entrepreneurs by optimizing server load.

Initially, registration on VKontakte was by invitation only, but by December 2006, the site became open to all users. In its first year, VK's user base grew to three million. To attract new users, the site management organized contests like "Win an iPod for bringing the most friends."

Despite minimizing expenses, the new project urgently needed investments to support the servers, especially since "Contact" at that time had no advertisements and was entirely non-commercial. Yuri Milner and his fund Digital Sky Technologies became the first investors in VKontakte, buying a 25% stake in the social network for $6.3 million, which they later sold to Mail.ru Group.

However, delaying the site's commercialization was impossible. In 2007, VKontakte users gained the ability to increase their ratings and give gifts to friends using virtual currency—"votes." Two years after the site's launch, the first banners for contextual advertising appeared. By that year, the site had become a leader in the Russian-speaking segment of the internet, with 20 million users.

Pavel rented the top two floors of the famous Singer House on Nevsky Prospekt, where the main office of VKontakte moved.

Since December 2011, Durov has actively participated in funding startups selected through competitions. The first six selected startups received $25,000 each from Durov. In early January 2012, Pavel donated $1 million to Wikipedia.

In November 2012, Nikolai Kononov's documentary book "Durov's Code," dedicated to the development of VKontakte, was published. AR Films immediately acquired the rights to adapt the book into a film. Pavel was highly opposed to the adaptation; however, despite his disapproval, the film's release was scheduled for late 2017.

Nikolai Kononov wrote a book about Pavel Durov

He is known for his "corporate war" with one of VKontakte's main shareholders, Mail.ru Group, which sought to absorb the social network and merge it with the site "Odnoklassniki" in 2011. In 2012, another conflict arose between VKontakte and the management of the newspaper "Vedomosti," related to one of the site's innovations that allowed users to view news from external resources without clicking on active links.

Shareholder Conflict Between Pavel Durov and UCP

In 2011, Dmitry Grishin, the newly appointed director of Mail.ru Group (formerly DST), which owned the social network Odnoklassniki, informed Durov of his intention to buy 100% of VKontakte shares, merge it with Odnoklassniki, and take VK public, making its shares available for purchase by the general public. Later, it became known that the potential deal exceeded $2 billion.

A week after the negotiations between these two "giants" of Runet, Durov posted a photo on his personal blog with his middle finger raised. The rude gesture was accompanied by the caption: "Official response to the trash-holding Mail's latest attempts to swallow VKontakte."

Because of the failed deal, Durov later had a falling out with his partners — Mirilashvili and Leviev. They sold their shares in the social network (40% and 8%) to the investment fund UCP (United Capital Partners) without notifying either Durov or Mail.ru Group. Pavel insisted that the deal was illegal because, under Russian law, a shareholder must offer their shares to other shareholders before selling them.

In turn, UCP was unhappy that Durov spent time and money on personal projects, specifically on the messenger Telegram, launched in August 2013. Durov claimed he was developing the messenger with his personal funds. UCP sued the VKontakte founder for misusing funds. Durov counter-sued UCP founder Ilya Sherbovich, accusing him of secretly buying Telegram LLC and Digital Fortress LLC shares with the help of his partners to later blackmail him into exchanging these shares for half of Telegram's shares. Eventually, both sides withdrew their lawsuits.

Shortly after, Durov sold his remaining 12% stake in VKontakte to MegaFon CEO Ivan Tavrin. Experts estimated the deal to be worth between $200 million and $400 million. A couple of months later, Tavrin sold the acquired shares to Mail.ru Group, which eventually became the owner of 52% of the company.

On April 1, 2014, Pavel Durov announced on his VKontakte page that he was stepping down as CEO "due to changes in the shareholder structure." It turned out that he had submitted a resignation letter on March 21. Later, he clarified that the information was a joke and that he would not leave his position so easily, betraying everything he had done for the site.

On April 16, Durov revealed the demands of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office to provide data on the organizers of the "Euromaidan" community and to block Alexey Navalny's anti-corruption community "Rospil." Durov refused both demands.

On April 21, Durov learned about his dismissal from the media. It was discovered that VKontakte's board of directors found errors in the retraction of his previous resignation letter, so he was automatically removed from his position. "Today VKontakte comes under the full control of Igor Sechin and Alisher Usmanov. Probably, in Russian conditions, something like this was inevitable, but I'm glad we lasted 7 and a half years," he concluded.

Soon after, Durov left Russia, taking a team of 12 programmers with him. He bought citizenship of the Caribbean island Saint Kitts and Nevis and does not intend to return to his homeland until at least seven conditions are met in Russia. These include open courts, elimination of contradictions between laws (deregulation), open elections for leadership positions, maximum taxes on the raw materials sector with the abolition of VAT, economic sovereignty of regions, education system reforms, and the abolition of feudal remnants like conscription and the residence permit cult.

Criticism Towards Durov

Many eccentric actions and statements by Durov face harsh criticism. A wave of angry articles hit him after he threw paper airplanes with 5000 rubles banknotes from his office window. Bloggers and journalists called this act of Durov "a merchant's whim," and the Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky, was even harsher: "A citizen who treats his people like cattle should get a job as a seamstress in prison."

Pavel Durov's Flying Money

On May 9, 2012, Durov again angered the Runet with a tweet: "67 years ago, Stalin defended his right to repress the USSR population from Hitler." Many bloggers and public figures sharply condemned this post and deleted their accounts on VKontakte, and Sergey Minaev called Durov "scum." Later, Vladislav Tsyplukhin, the then press secretary of VKontakte, stated that Durov respects Victory Day and that the tweet was related to the fact that his grandfather, who fought throughout the Great Patriotic War, was later repressed.

Pavel Durov Hit a Traffic Inspector

In 2013, the founder of VKontakte allegedly hit a police officer with his car. A video appeared on the internet showing a person resembling Pavel Durov violating traffic rules, hitting the inspector, and then fleeing the scene. Notably, this incident happened during a power struggle among the shareholders of Russia's largest social network.

Telegram vs. Roskomnadzor

After leaving VKontakte, Pavel Durov focused on developing Telegram, which, according to various estimates, cost him up to $12 million a year to maintain.

Pavel Durov calls himself a 'citizen of the world'

In May 2017, Durov clashed with Roskomnadzor (The Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media). The head of the agency, Alexander Zharov, did not rule out blocking the messenger in Russia because Durov, known for his libertarian views, refused to cooperate with the authorities and provide data for the registration of the messenger, whose concept implied complete anonymity of correspondence, which Durov was concerned about protecting.

After the refusal, an information attack hit Telegram. Major federal channels aired stories in which Telegram was directly called the main communication channel for terrorists, and FSB representatives stated that the terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg metro was coordinated using the messenger. Businessman Oleg Tinkov called Durov a "boor," demonstratively deleted Telegram from his smartphone, and promised money to those who followed his example.

On June 28, Durov still provided data for Telegram registration in Russia but expressed hope that it would not come to providing encryption keys or user data. Otherwise, Pavel stated, there would be no cooperation.

A new round of confrontation between Telegram and the Russian authorities began in April 2018. On the 13th, the court ordered to block the messenger for refusing to provide the FSB with encryption keys, which Durov claimed were technically impossible to provide due to software specifics. On April 16, Roskomnadzor began the blocking process. Pavel refused to cooperate with the authorities and posted a photo on a white horse on his personal blog with the comment: "To be free, you must risk everything for freedom."

After several days, Telegram remained accessible to most users. In attempts to destroy the messenger, Roskomnadzor blocked over 20 million IP addresses, leading to disruptions in the operation of many major services based on Amazon and Google cloud hosting. Two years later, Roskomnadzor announced the lifting of the blocks.

During the 2021 Russian State Duma elections, Durov removed the "Smart Voting" chatbot, developed by Navalny's associates, from Telegram. Earlier, he criticized Google and Apple for censoring information and access to apps. However, he called the blocking of the "Smart Voting" app legal and justified it by the interests of millions of messenger users. Indeed, according to a September 2021 study, 52% of users of the Russian internet segment actively use Telegram.

Cryptocurrency

In 2018, Durov announced the blockchain platform The Open Network (TON) for Telegram. In 2020, due to legal issues with the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), Durov had to withdraw from the project. The reason was the ICO of the Gram token, which the SEC considered an unregistered security. The total funds raised reached an impressive $1.7 billion.

Facing a difficult situation, Durov decided to compromise with the regulator. He paid an $18.5 million fine and returned the investments to the investors.

However, this was not the end of the TON story. The project was revived by the efforts of the TON Foundation community. In late 2021, Durov publicly stated that he was no longer involved in the project, emphasizing that he had ceased his participation in 2020 after the ban on issuing cryptocurrency in the U.S.

TON uses the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm and promises high transaction speed and scalability. The platform is designed for creating decentralized applications, smart contracts, and conducting fast and cheap transactions. The network's native token is called Toncoin.

By 2024, the TON ecosystem had significantly expanded: a whole system of applications for TON appeared in Telegram, a major stablecoin USDT was launched on the TON blockchain, and the cryptocurrency Toncoin became one of the leading tokens by volume issued.

Before Durov's arrest, Toncoin ranked 9th in market capitalization ($14.2 billion). Since the beginning of the year, the coin's value has increased multiple times. Interest in the project grew after Pavel Durov's interview with the Financial Times, where he mentioned a preliminary valuation of Telegram at $30 billion ahead of a possible IPO.

Personal Life of Pavel Durov

Not much is known about Pavel Durov's personal life. Some sensationalist media have cited documents from the St. Petersburg registry office, according to which Durov is the father of two children (born in 2009 and 2010). Their mother is journalist Daria Bondarenko, a graduate of the Faculty of History at St. Petersburg State University. The press service of VKontakte called this information "tabloid gossip," and Durov himself put it more bluntly: "I was shocked when I found this out."

Daria Bondarenko (left), Pavel Durov's ex-girlfriend

Those who knew Durov before his wealth and fame claimed that he did indeed date Daria, but the couple had no children.

Since 2018, rumors have circulated about an affair between Durov and model Alyona Shishkova. They at least traveled to Paris together, and Durov attended Shishkova's 25th birthday party. When asked if they were dating, the charming blonde gave a vague response: "It's complicated."

In July 2024, a certain Irina Bolgar, a 44-year-old St. Petersburg resident, claimed to be the secret wife of the Telegram founder and that her three children (daughter Leah, born in 2013, and sons Daniel and David, born in 2016 and 2017 respectively) are Pavel Durov's children.

Pavel did not comment on her statement. A few days later, a post appeared on Durov's Telegram channel in which he revealed that he is the biological father of over a hundred children. Fifteen years earlier, a close friend had asked him to donate sperm for him and his wife. The clinic discovered Durov had very high-quality genetic material, and he felt it was his duty to help more than a hundred families in 12 countries become parents.

Now I plan to open-source my DNA so that my biological children can find each other more easily... I also want to help destigmatize the whole notion of sperm donation and incentivize more healthy men to do it, so that families struggling to have kids can enjoy more options.

Durov is very meticulous about his body and mind. For instance, he once admitted that he eats no more than twice a day and considers three or more meals a day an unhealthy habit. He called Netflix, TikTok, and other sources of "irrelevant content" sticky brain mud that destroys the most important tool of any person – the mind: "If we want to regain our creative freedom, we must first regain control over our minds."

Pavel Durov holds four citizenships: Russia, France, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the UAE.

Pavel Durov Now: Arrest in France

On the evening of August 24, 2024, Pavel Durov was detained at Le Bourget Airport in Paris after arriving from Azerbaijan on a private jet. French police arrested Durov based on a warrant issued by the National Directorate of Judicial Police. It turned out that Durov is on the wanted list in France.

The reason for the detention lies in a long-standing conflict between Durov and the French authorities. The entrepreneur refused to cooperate on content moderation issues in Telegram, leading to accusations of involvement in drug trafficking, terrorism, crimes against children, and fraud. All these charges are linked to his refusal to provide access to Telegram user data.

The situation for Durov is challenging. If the charges are confirmed, he could face up to 20 years in prison. Given that Durov obtained French citizenship in 2021, he cannot be extradited or exchanged.

The day after the detention, on August 25, Durov was supposed to appear in court. However, by the evening of the same day, there was no accurate information on whether formal charges had been filed against him. Previously, Durov diligently avoided visiting countries whose intelligence services demanded his cooperation regarding Telegram.

Telegram Creator on Elon Musk, Resisting FBI Attacks, and Getting Mugged in California

Durov had previously faced pressure from authorities. For example, earlier in 2024, he told Tucker Carlson in an interview about his tense relationship with the American authorities. According to him, wherever he and his team appeared in the US, they constantly felt the close attention of the FBI and other security services. During their last visit to the United States, American cybersecurity agents secretly tried to recruit one of Telegram's engineers. This attempt was made without Durov's knowledge, which he saw as a breach of trust and an attempt to interfere with the company's work.

Colleagues of Pavel from Telegram issued a statement calling the charges absurd:

It's absurd to consider that the platform or its owner is responsible for violations on this platform.

Support for Durov came from major global figures like Elon Musk and also from Russian politicians: Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, Ombudswoman for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova, leader of the New People party Vladislav Davankov, and many others.