Meet Pavel Durov, the tech billionaire who founded Telegram, fled from Moscow 15 years ago after defying the Kremlin, and has a penchant for posting half-naked selfies on Instagram
Pavel Durov, the founder of messaging app Telegram, is worth $15.1 billion.
The Russian-born tech mogul fled from Moscow 15 years ago and now lives in Dubai.
Beyond his reputation as the “Zuckerberg of Russia,” he has a big social-media presence, perhaps most notably for launching the “Shirtless Putin Challenge” on Instagram.
Pavel Durov, 37, is the founder and owner of messaging app Telegram. The billionaire has been called the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia.”
Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov, center, smiles following his meeting with Indonesian Communication and Information Minister Rudiantara in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2017.
Tatan Syuflana/AP
Durov, who was born in St Petersburg in Soviet Russia, has a net worth of $15.1 billion, per Forbes.
Much of Durov’s wealth comes from Telegram, which has 500 million active users and is valued at $30 billion.
Durov did not reply to Insider’s requests for comment for this story.
Before founding Telegram, Durov founded a Russian social network called Vkontakte. The site brought him fame and money — but it also made him a target of the Kremlin.
A post shared by Pavel Durov (@durov)
Durov created the network in 2006 and went on to sell a 12% stake in the company for $300 million in 2015.
The site brought him fame: He became known as Russia’s “biggest celebrity entrepreneur,” per The New York Times. But it also came with political trouble, namely when Durov refused the Kremlin’s demands to access Vkontakte data of Ukrainian protest leaders.
Durov said he was fired in April 2014 from his position as CEO of Vkontakte as state-backed entities sought to control the network, per Reuters. The Mail.Ru group, which is owned by oligarch Alisher Usmanov, bought the network for $1.47 billion later that year.
He told the Times he was forced to leave Moscow in 2014 after a SWAT team appeared at his home.
Today, Telegram has become a massive influence in Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine, with both sides using the app for its secure technology.
Telegram founder had become a cult icon for antiauthoritarianism in the region.
Peter Kovalev/TASS via Getty Images
Durov’s conflicts with the Kremlin didn’t end with Vkontakte.
In 2018, Telegram was banned in Russia after Durov denied the Kremlin access to user data. In response to the ban, hundreds of people protested, some of whom were holding signs of Durov illustrated as a saint (pictured above). The app was reinstated in Russia two years later.
Today, Telegram is playing a major role in the war in Ukraine.
Durov vowed in a Telegram post in March to protect the data of Ukrainian users. Durov is of partial Ukrainian descent, according to the post.
“When I defied [the Kremlin’s] demands, the stakes were high for me personally,” Durov wrote in the post. “I stand for our users no matter what. Their right to privacy is sacred,” he added.
Durov now lives in Dubai, where Telegram’s operations are based.
Palm Jumeirah in the Gulf emirate of Dubai on January 10, 2022.
Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images
Durov moved to Dubai in 2017 and relocated Telegram’s operations to an office in Dubai’s Media City, per Bloomberg. The network had been previously been based in Berlin.
In an interview with Bloomberg in December 2017, Durov said moving to Dubai afforded him “better ways to use [his] money to benefit society,” as the city has no personal income tax.
In January 2018, Durov wrote on Twitter that Telegram is “unlikely to ever consider any location be [its] permanent base.”
Durov is the wealthiest person in the United Arab Emirates, the Khaleej Times reported in 2021.
A post shared by Pavel Durov (@durov)
Durov is 112th-richest person in the world and the youngest self-made billionaire in the Middle East, per the Khaleej Times. As of 2021, he’s one of 11 billionaires living in Dubai.
Durov has a big Instagram presence, with more than 767,000 followers. His posts range from photos showing off his Dubai lifestyle to shirtless snaps showing off his physique.
A post shared by Pavel Durov (@durov)
In August 2017, Durov’s Instagram post parodying Russian President Vladimir Putin went viral.
Durov’s post on Instagram, aptly named the “Putin Shirtless Challenge,” called for users to post photos of themselves bare-chested in the style of Putin.
“Two rules from Putin – no photoshop, no pumping. Otherwise you’re not an alpha,” Durov wrote in the post in August 2017. Over 3,000 posts with Durov’s hashtag were uploaded on Instagram. To date, it’s gotten over 120,000 likes.
Despite having 1.3 million followers on Twitter, Durov only follows one person: Elon Musk.
While not much is known about Durov’s assets, he’s been known to share the occasional yacht shot on Instagram.
A post shared by Pavel Durov (@durov)
He shared a photo from the deck of a Lurssen yacht off the coast of Italy in 2016.
The cost of a Lurssen yacht starts at around one million dollars and can run as high as $185 million, per Yacht World. Durov never confirmed if he owned the Lurssen yacht that he sailed in.
Durov said in an Instagram post in August 2016 that while he wasn’t a “fan of giant Lurssen yachts,” he liked the manufacturer’s sailing vessel. Lurssen currently only has one sailing yacht that was built in the 21st century.
Durov posted another photo of a superyacht on Instagram in 2015.
Durov’s profile was once found on Tinder in 2017, according to Bloomberg.
A post shared by Pavel Durov (@durov)
Bloomberg reported that Durov was “half-naked” on his profile photo on the dating app.
“Not looking for anything serious or not serious here,” he wrote on his profile, per the publication. “Just playing with the app,” he added.
In a 2020 blog post, Durov spoke out against Silicon Valley, writing that the region has “limited cultural life.”
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov delivers his keynote conference during day two of the Mobile World Congress at the Fira Gran Via complex in Barcelona, Spain on February 23, 2016.
Manuel Blondeau/AOP.Press/Corbis/Getty Images
Durov wrote the post in response to journalist and YouTuber Yury Dud’s film about Silicon Valley. The film has garnered 45 million views on YouTube.
In the post, Durov listed seven reasons he did not want to move to Silicon Valley.
“The US is not the best place to live or run an IT business,” Durov wrote. “Local programmers are expensive, spoiled and often unable to focus on work due to the flow of outside suggestions and ideas,” he added.
Durov also described the US as a “police state” and said he was attacked in San Francisco in June 2015 by thieves who wanted to steal his phone.
From the tech platforms he has founded to his comments on his personal social-media accounts, Durov is no stranger to controversy.
Part of the controversy stems from the nature of the social networks he has built. Telegram, for example, is the “app of choice” of terror networks like ISIS, per the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“We cannot make messaging technology secure for everybody except terrorists,” Durov said in an interview with CNN in February 2016. “It’s either secure or not secure.”
But he’s also something of an instigator on his personal accounts.
In 2014, for example, when the Russian state called for a ban on Vkontakte, Durov’s response was to post a photo of a dog in a hoodie on Twitter. When Vkontakte was accused of hosting pornography, he changed his Twitter handle from “VK CEO” to “Porn King,” according to The Calvert Journal. And in 2017, he shared his passport photo on Twitter, writing that it’s “strangely suitable for media articles about terrorists using Telegram.”
