Telegram CEO Durov says he was poisoned during TON fund raise

Telegram founder and The Open Network (TON) developer Pavel Durov has claimed that he was poisoned in 2018 as tensions between Telegram and Russia began to escalate.

Durov revealed the poisoning attempt during an interview on the Lex Fridman podcast on Tuesday. In it, he described a “weird” neighbor leaving something at the door of the townhouse he was renting.

Within the hour, he said he began to fear for his life as his body began to shut down and he collapsed. Durov says he eventually woke up covered in broken blood vessels and was unable to walk for two weeks.

Durov poisoned during eventful spring

Durov didn’t specify exactly when the poisoning occurred, only revealing that it happened in the spring of 2018.

It was around this time that his TON crypto project raised $1.7 billion across two funding rounds from 170 investors, including various Russian billionaires.

Then in April, Telegram refused to give encryption keys to Russia’s Federal Security Service, which wanted access to messaging data. Russia eventually banned the app later that month.

Read more: Telegram snitched on 2,000 users to US authorities in 2024, report

Russia did lift its ban two years later, after Telegram cooperated with its terrorist investigation, although the ban reportedly had little effect.

March 2018 also saw the Salisbury poisonings in the UK, in which two high-ranking Russian intelligence agents attempted to poison the former Russian military officer, Sergei Skripal using Novichok nerve agent.

Durov encouraged to share more on poison attempt

Durov’s claimed poisoning has raised questions from Christo Grozev, the former lead Russian investigator for Bellingcat, who covered the Salisbury poisonings and the death of Putin opponent, Alexey Navalny.

Indeed, he implored Durov to share when and where he was poisoned so that the perpetrator could be uncovered.

He said, “It’s not a sign of selflessness to hide this from your friends and colleagues. It’s a sign of courage — and responsibility — to allow us to look into what happened to you and who was behind it.”

Read more: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested, conspiracy theorists do their thing

Grozev also noted the “likely coincidence” that Durov left the UK for Dubai one day after the Salisbury suspects left the UK for Moscow.

He also reported that in 2018, Durov was recorded spending most of his time in Dubai, while also visiting the UK, France, and Switzerland.

The news outlet Important Stories discovered that Durov had visited Russia 50 times between 2014 and 2021 despite his exile in 2014. The only time he wasn’t in Russia was during the year when Russia attempted to ban his app.

Grozev noted that in 2020, Durov began visiting Russia again for the first time since 2017. He also detailed how Telegram shut down Nalvany’s smart voting Telegram tool during Russia’s 2021 election.

According to the Important Stories 2024 report, Durov hasn’t visited Russia since October 2021.