now on bbc news — panorama telegram and the russian billionaire. this social media app's been described as a one—stop shop for crime. it's all here, man. 100% legit. telegram is definitely one of the most important platforms criminals are using now. six million people in the uk have telegram on their phone. so, on a scale of one to ten, telegram, i would say, is an 11. it's a site where you can buy almost anything... this guy has just basically said he can send me an uzi to belfast in two or three days. ..and its billionaire owner has

boasted about not reporting anyone to the police. for over two years of our existence, we haven't disclosed a single byte of data to third parties, including governments. so, how has pavel durov got away with it for so long? pavel durov: we at telegram love freedom - freedom - to communicate privately, freedom...to express yourselves publicly. you may not recognise pavel durov, but he's one of the most powerful people on the planet. we strongly believe in giving people freedom to build their own tools, their own apps, their own businesses.

he owns telegram, a social media platform with almost a billion users worldwide. we have 250,000 users sign up daily for telegram. it's promoted as a private messaging app. pavel durov claims he's protecting free speech. but french police think he's doing much more than that. pavel durov was arrested when he landed here in a private jet in august. he has been accused of aiding drug dealing, the sharing of child sexual abuse images and organised crime on telegram. the unprecedented nature of this case, arresting a tech ceo for their platform's use, has sparked a heated debate about freedom of speech and accountability.

pavel durov denies the allegations. it's the first time the owner of a big social media company has been arrested. the arrest of pavel durov is completely unprecedented. the ramifications of this arrest are going to be felt by the tech industry, governments and users for years and years to come. this is why pavel durov has been arrested. crime is rampant on his site. anything you see, $100 off, man. ttp verified, man. come and get with them.

big respect, bro. man's going to be putting a big order in next. any user can set up their own channel on telegram and broadcast worldwide. just made my day, mate. it's like having your own tv station with no regulation. criminals are cashing in. what first struck you about telegram? the fact that criminals feel so comfortable talking brazenly and openly about the type of operations that they were engaged in. professor david maimon has spent six years investigating illegal content on telegram. we're looking at tens of thousands of channels, right, at this point. tens of thousands of channels

with illegal or harmful content? yeah, illegal content. you canjoin into criminal groups quite easily and see whatever interests you, place a purchase simply by texting the admin or the vendor out there, and, you know, depending on the commodity and the distance, you could potentially have the illicit commodity within two to three business days. it's extraordinary, isn't it? extraordinary. it's really interesting and mind—boggling to understand how easy it is. it's all here, man — everything here. 100% legit. telegram has everything a criminal needs. it keeps their data private... look, it's raining! ..its channels provide a mass market, and there are sites that teach you how to profit from crime. you can also clone any voice i you want to use on the video. dm me now to get this update. we make your work easy for you.

this site teaches scammers how to change their appearance using ai so they can pretend to be someone else online. so, the guy in the bottom left—hand corner, he's the criminal, potentially? yeah, allegedly, this is the criminal. he's using and showing us how to use a tool which will allow you to swap your face with another person and then talk to another person online live. all the information you need is available on telegram. if you want to facilitate with a vendor and you want to talk to a hacker, or you want to talk to someone who can help you get the stuff you need, you can do that on telegram. telegram is definitely one of the most important platforms criminals are using now for criminality. that's some nice beep.

telegram says it removes millions of pieces of harmful content every day. there you go. "yeah, bro." but you can still buy almost anything on the site. "bruv, i need some sticks. "need an uzi and a shotgun." 0h! gee! laughing: did you see how quick it was? - this guy's just sent a picture of an uzi and said he could get it fast—tracked to belfast, two or three days, and it would cost me £850. do you think that's legit? we know that it's legit, yeah. 0k. based on our investigations, based on our work in telegram, 90% of what we're looking at is legit in the context of drugs,

guns, counterfeit products. if you place a purchase, you're actually going to get what you're looking for. the criminality on telegram hasn't affected pavel durov�*s popularity. he's an online hero. it all springs from his past in russia. in 2006, he founded vkontakte — or vk. it became the country's biggest social media platform. vk became extremely popular in russia because basically it's a replica of facebook. you can watch tv, you can watch films, you can download music. it was all for free, all pirated,

and there was no rules, basically. crowd chants: svobodu, svobodu! vk was widely used by anti—putin protesters. so in 2011, the authorities told pavel durov to shut down their accounts. woman screams he says he refused to help the kremlin. he posted a picture, and an internet myth was born — the resistance dog. since then, this dog has become the mascot of free speech. but did pavel durov really defy the authorities? in 2012, this letter to a kremlin official was leaked to a russian newspaper.

the name at the bottom of the letter was pavel durov. it said that, "we've been sharing information "on thousands of users of our network — "ip addresses, mobile phone numbers "and other information "which you need to identify these people." pavel durov told us the letter was forged as part of a campaign to discredit him. in 2014, he sold his share of vk for $300 million. i had to make a difficult decision because i was offered, basically, a choice between two suboptimal options, one of which was, i would start complying to whatever the leaders of the country told me to do. and the other one was, i could sell my stake in the company, retire, resign as the ceo and leave the country.

um...i chose the latter. it's another powerful story. but pavel durov wasn't exactly in exile. after selling vk, he regularly went to russia to do business and visit his children. please welcome the ceo and founder of vk.com, pavel durov. cheers and applause. pavel durov also tells a questionable story about how he started telegram. he claims he developed it using the cash he got from selling vkontakte in 2014. but telegram was launched a year earlier, while he was still running vk.

pavel durov�*s not exactly out of favour with the kremlin either. since 2020, telegram has been allowed to operate in russia. under russian law, all social media firms operating in the country have to allow the security services access to user information. the system of national surveillance we have in the country is extremely, extremely totalitarian. so, if telegram is operating in russia... ..how likely is it that they're doing that without russian authority access? i would say that, right now, the russian authorities are quite satisfied with the level of cooperation provided by telegram. telegram told us it doesn't have any servers in russia, and hasn't handed over any

information to the authorities. it's hard for anyone to regulate telegram, because it isn't based in a single country. pavel durov and his team move between different cities around the world. i'm in barcelona to meet one of the few non—russians who became part of his inner circle. when i first met pavel durov, i and he started talking about how he saw the future of messaging, i realised that, "wow, _ we're just getting started." elies campo worked closely with pavel durov at telegram for six years. he says the billionaire ran every aspect of the company. the only person at the organisation

who knew all the different team - members and all the different teams and all the different— initiatives was pavel durov. so pavel was the only person - at the company who knew the whole picture of the organisation. he was the linchpin, the sort of centre point for everything? yes. was there anything that ever happened in telegram that pavel durov didn't know about, in your time? i'm sure there's details or things like that that he didn't— know, but it's like... ..anything major or important for the organisation, - he knew and he took the decision. i'd like to welcome elies campo onstage for a conversation with me. pavel durov has tried to discredit elies campo by downplaying his role... ..but the evidence is overwhelming. you're now director of business development at telegram. he was involved in high—level meetings and business deals for telegram. hola! aqui, genial.

un abrazo. it's interesting because there's so much evidence. there's so much people that can vouch for the work that we did. and i can't help to question, why would they do that? so, these bits of lack of integrity, i think it's what's been mostly disappointing for me over the last few years. telegram doesn't only help criminals, it helps promote extremism, too. i've come to north carolina to meet one of the few people who have studied how telegram actually works. she says that the site has an algorithm that pushes users towards ever more extreme content.

the southern poverty law center is about to publish research based on a study of 28,000 telegram channels. it reveals how a new feature introduced by telegram makes toxic recommendations. professor megan squire is the lead author. on a scale of one to ten, telegram, i would say, is an 11. it's a one—stop shop. it's dishing out enormous amounts of criminal content, extremist content — i mean, you name it. it is extremely dangerous, in my opinion. megan's set up a new telegram account to show how the algorithm works. she starts by simply searching for donald trump. and immediately you're shown a whole bunch of different channels. but what i want to draw

our attention to is, over here, there's this "similar channels" area. oh, yes. so, we click in and we're shown, what other channels might i be interested in? i've got qanon content here — multiple channels. all right, let's pick one randomly. here we go. it is a combination maga scheme and a scam. we've obviously initiated that by typing a word, but all of the other recommendations thereafter are telegram—chosen, or algorithm—chosen? it's an algorithm that's trying to tell me, "if you liked this, you'll really like this." so it's suggesting what other folks like me thought was interesting. so, why don't we look for something that happened recently in the uk, like the uk riots? if we searched those words... oh, yeah, we can do that. the content telegram promotes can be shocking.

and the first meme that you're shown is a "hitler was right" meme. and by the way, there were no other results there. that was all we were given. so, again, we've got 75 similar channels. oh, yeah, so let's see the similar channels. so, ok, now you've got... looks like some nationalist groups. "very british". oh, this is a very bad channel. some of these groups are pretty active. you're notjust on telegram getting memes. like, you're getting shuffled into actual events. they're having events on the ground, with people showing up. telegram told us users are only presented with content they have chosen to engage with. but the more you click, the more extreme the content can become on pavel durov�*s platform. it does not appear that he has the level of respect for the law that we see in a normal tech platform. it appears that he does not care.

how much responsibility should he have? it's his platform. all — all of it. all the responsibility is on his head. telegram told us it removed 35 million pieces of extremist content betweenjuly and september this year alone. time to die, bleep! gunshots. but there's still plenty on the site. 0urformer insider says pavel durov simply wasn't interested in moderation. elies campo says he challenged pavel durov about extremist content in 2021. his stance was, "it's not up to a platform like us "to decide who should be speaking out." it was clear that he didn't

want to dedicate more resources to it, and i think, if he could choose, he would choose more a stance where he doesn't have to moderate anything. telegram denies there are countless channels promoting extremist and illegal content. it says it... ..and has a... it is... ..and now removes... ..for violations. despite all the criminality on his site, pavel durov has boasted about his refusal to share any user information. through over two years of our existence, we haven't disclosed a single byte of data to third parties, including governments. that claim was repeated on telegram until pavel durov�*s arrest this august.

by refusing to pass information to the police, telegram has allowed those who abuse children to get away with their crimes. when did you first become concerned about telegram? when we saw them being advertised on social media platforms. the internet watch foundation — or iwf — says telegram hosts a large volume of child sexual abuse material. we'd see groups talking about child sexual abuse material, and we have seen thousands of links hosted on telegram servers that are directly displaying child sexual abuse material, with the promise of more imagery if you join the groups. dinner in five minutes, evie! the iwf makes videos like this to show the dangers to children online.

we are seeing the worst of the worst — the cruelty in each and every image that we come across. you look so pretty in your picture, evie. each image is a crime scene, and each time that image is shared and spread — or sold — over and over, that child is being revictimised. and so, over and over again, people are looking at and profiting from images of children being sexually abused. and that's awful. telegram says it has promptly removed every image that the charity has reported. but the iwf says many are reposted soon after being removed. it could be easily stopped. the charity has software that can identify and remove child sexual abuse images.

what if technology existed that could automatically hunt out i imagery, flag it for removal, - and even stop it from being uploaded in the first place? the software scans online content and checks it against a database of flagged pictures. all the big social media firms use it — except one. telegram refused to sign up. do you think telegram have a legitimate excuse, then, to have not done it? i don't think anyone has a legitimate excuse to have not done it. there is no legitimate excuse for any platform that is handling and allowing user—generated content, uploading and sharing images and videos, to not be doing this. before the french authorities arrested pavel durov, they say they'd made 2,460 requests for information, some about child abusers. telegram didn't respond

to a single one. could there be anybody else within telegram that made those decisions apart from pavel durov? if he was not the person who received these first—hand, he was then... these were forwarded to him to take a decision on whether to comply or even reply to these. telegram says... ..and that it... it has a... ..to child sex abuse material. in november alone... and pavel durov is...

back in the uk, telegram says it responded to three requests from law enforcement this year. the national crime agency have told us the platform responded to only one of its requests. the nca say that telegram is widely used by criminals to cause harm. they say it had a long—standing policy of noncooperation with law enforcement, and that it's too early to tell if there's been any real, meaningful change since pavel durov�*s arrest that would make telegram a less damaging platform. telegram has now announced a u—turn. it's finally agreed to use the iwf�*s software to remove child sexual abuse material. did the shift in attitude of telegram come before or after that arrest?

after the arrest. so it could have been done before now? it absolutely could have been done before now. keir starmer: thank you, mr speaker, and i thank the prime minister. - so, what more can be done to stop telegram from promoting criminality and extremism ? telegram has been described - as the app of choice for extremists. when he was in opposition, keir starmer called for an urgent clamp—down. the prime minister and - the government could stop this i by making it clear that directorsl of companies are criminally liable for failing to tackle this type of material on their sites. i now, his government says the answer is to implement the new 0nline safety act, but that will rely on the honesty and transparency of the platforms. in france, they're taking a tougher approach. pavel durov�*s currently on bail and not allowed

to leave the country. for years, pavel durov has allowed telegram to be used for the worst kinds of criminality, and it's only since his arrest has he offered to clean up his platform. but can we really trust him to do what he says? it means a lot to me to have the support of so many aryans. for now, telegram is still awash with harmful content. look at those beautiful swastikas! white power! there we go. white power! pavel durov says it's all about privacy and freedom of speech. yeah! make america white again! woo—woo! megan squire: the time for telegram to regulate itself is over, _ and they've proven that they're not up to the task. it is something that folks need to be aware of now. this app is a problem.

live from washington. this is bbc news. syria's new leader pledges armed groups will be absorbed into the army, as some communities express fear for their future. tributes are being paid to nine year old andre gleissner, who german police identified as one of the five victims in a christmas market attack. and in his first rally since winning the presidential election — donald trump says he may demand the return of the panama canal to the us. syria's de facto leader, ahmed al—sharaa, has said all weapons in the country are to come under state control — and that armed factions would soon begin to be dissolved and incorporated into the army.

his hayat tahrir al—sham group, or hts, was the key rebel group that overthrew president