No employees, no companies? Is Telegram really not connected to Russia
Dmitry Koshelnik
Originally from"VKontakte"
Pavel Durov launched Telegram in 2013. You can read about the story that led to the idea of creating your own messenger here. In short, Durov claims that in December 2011, as the CEO of VKontakte, he refused to remove opposition groups at the request of the FSB. After that, masked men came to him, but he did not open the door for them. Next, Durov decided to contact his brother Nikolai (ex-STO "VKontakte" and acting in Telegram), but realized that there is no safe way to do this. However, this beautiful story gives too little information about how the messenger was actually created.
Rumors about a potentially new project Durov began to appear in 2012. In particular, Nikolai Kononov wrote about this rather vaguely in the biography of the entrepreneur "Durov Code".
In 2018, the former deputy CTO of VKontakte and director of special areas of Telegram, Anton Rosenberg, gave an interview to Russian GQ, where he touched on the history of the messenger's creation. Before dwelling on it, I will note that at that time Rosenberg had a conflict and legal showdowns with the Durov brothers. Therefore, it is not necessary to rely on the information provided unambiguously. However, at least some of what he said about Telegram's history is confirmed in other sources.
So, according to Rosenberg, the situation with opposition groups and special forces was settled by the New Year. He believes that the letter to Vladislav Surkov (at that time deputy chairman of the Russian government, but we are better known as the author of the concept of the "Russian world" and the ideologist of the "Novorossiya"project) could have influenced.
“In it, he tried to explain that” VKontakte" does not engage in politics, adheres to Russian laws and is ready to cooperate, and attempts to block protest groups will lead to the fact that all activity will move to Facebook, which is not controlled by the authorities," says Rosenberg.
We couldn't find the full text of the email itself. However, some points from it are quoted in the material of the Russian "Novaya Gazeta". According to the publication, in particular, it said that VKontakte has been cooperating with the FSB and the K department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for several years "promptly providing information about thousands of users of our network in the form of IP addresses, mobile phone numbers and other information necessary for their identification."
In "VKontakte" and Telegram denied the existence of this letter. Press secretary of the social network Vladislav Tsyplukhin noted that Durov had only one meeting with Surkov, at which they allegedly talked about the Russian innovation center Skolkovo. Tsyplukhin himself allegedly met Surkov twice. According to Tsyplukhin, he was interested in his view on the Internet, the media situation in it, asked about plans to move to the West and " partly regarding the elections."
We tried to ask Andrey Kolesnikov, the author of the Novaya Gazeta article, about this. He declined to comment and responded rather aggressively. However, he noted that everything published by Novaya Gazeta is true.
In any case, the conflict with the Russian authorities subsided, and Durov did not give up the idea of creating a messenger.
Development began in April 2012. Rosenberg claims that Durov told the developers of VKontakte to create a more convenient and faster messenger than WhatsApp.
You can read about the further conflict with shareholders and legal showdowns with the UCP fund connected with Putin , which tried to take away the messenger from Durov, here. According to the official version, in 2014, Durov sold his stake in VKontakte and did not hold any positions in the company. In April of the same year, he claimed that he had left the Russian Federation and did not plan to return.
Around the same time, Durov began to build a reputation as a dissident who left Russia for political reasons. In particular, because the FSB refused to hand over the personal information of the organizers of Euromaidan groups. It looked like the entrepreneur had severed ties with the Russian Federation and removed the Telegram team from there. But it's not that simple.
From 2012 to 2019, there was a Russian company, LLC "Telegraph". Its legal address, at least at the end of 2013 — is the Singer House, 6th floor, Nevsky Prospekt, 28, St. Petersburg. That is, she was in the same room as VKontakte. We are interested in this company because they suspect that it was there that the first Telegram development office was located. Why? About everything in order.
According to the former CEO of Telegraph LLC Andrey Lopatin and Rosenberg, the Telegram team continued to work in Singer's House even after Durov's official departure.
Rosenberg claims that both Nikolai and Pavel Durov remained in the Russian Federation. Lopatin also said that at the time of his dismissal (autumn 2014) Pavel Durov was in this office every day. Other employees of VKontakte and Telegram at the time also confirmed that Durov often visited Singer's house. And, according to sources of the Russian publication "Secret of the Firm", the entrepreneur visited there in 2016. By the way, the same article says that Nikolai Durov then continued to live in St. Petersburg.
And what did Durov himself say about the Telegraph? In 2017, he told Meduza that the last time the team met at Singer's House was in 2014. He also called "Telegraph" a contractor company with which Telegram collaborated. It allegedly outsourced the analysis of Russian-language spam, which was done by the former team of moderators of VKontakte.
At the same time, Meduza traced the Connection between Telegram and Telegraph in the same text. Registered in Belize, Telegraph is a co-founder of the British Telegram Messenger LLP (which uploaded the Telegram messenger to app stores) and Telegraph LLC. Another interesting point is the data from Durov's own lawsuit against UCP in 2014. It says that the entrepreneur was engaged in the creation and financing of LLC "Telegraph".
From all of the above, we can conclude that at least in the first years of work, Telegram had a subsidiary in Russia. Moreover, former developers of VKontakte worked in it. I can't believe they were just sorting out spam. Durov himself, it seems, also did not leave Russia at all, despite his statements.
Familiar people everywhere
Another important question is: who is currently on the Telegram team? Only four figures are publicly known - Durov himself, his brother Nikolai, Ilya Perekopsky and Mikhail Ravdonikas. Let's focus on the last two.
Both Perekopsky and Ravdonikas are Durov's university friends who worked for VKontakte and then moved to Telegram. Ravdonikas is a less prominent figure. Until 2013, he was the marketing director of VKontakte. Currently, he holds the position of Vice President of Communications at Telegram. But about Perekopsky it is worth telling in more detail.
Ilya Perekopsky
In 2014, it looked like the relationship between Durov and Perekopsky had soured. When Perekopsky left VKontakte, he became an adviser to UCP and accused Pavel of "breaking up" the company. He also said that Durov took with him to Telegram "15 best programmers-Olympiadniks".
"And Durov himself, under pressure from shareholders, cowardly betrays his friends, naively believing that he will be able to shift responsibility for the billion-dollar businesses of his brothers, the brother of his common-law wife and his other relatives to me," Perekopsky noted. VC.RU (the text was deleted at the request of the author).
Durov reacted with restraint. He said that Perekopsky is not easy. And he also accused UCP: "apparently, UCP caught [Ilya and his brother Igor] Perekopskikh on opaque schemes and, having intimidated them with the courts, decided to use them in their dirty game for control of the company. Of course, with the promise of mountains of gold and a CEO position. A logical move for bandits who came from oil to IT."
In addition to consulting UCP, Perekopsky also filed a lawsuit against VKontakte, in which he demanded to pay him proper compensation upon dismissal. Durov, in turn, sued UCP and Perekopsky for trying to take Telegram away from him. After the parties settled the situation, the conflict seems to have subsided.
Perekopsky's next project was Blackmoon Financial Group, which he and Oleg Seidak launched in 2014. The company has created an online service for non-bank lending in the United States. In 2016, the company raised $2.5 million from Flint Capital Global, Target Global and A&NN Group funds. The founder of A & NN Group is Alexander Mamut, a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
By 2018, Durov's relationship with Perekopsky seems to have improved again, and Perekopsky became a vice president of Telegram. He started developing the messenger business. Perekopsky's arrival coincided with the successful ICO of the Telegram-TON (Telegram Open Network) blockchain project. The messenger raised $1.7 billion from 171 investors. Their names were not disclosed. However, the Russian media names among them the founder of Qiwi Sergey Solonin, co-founder of Wimm-Bill-Dann David Yakobashvili and the oligarch Roman Abramovich. The last two were sanctioned after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Perekopsky also had experience in the cryptocurrency market. Together with the same Seidak, he created the Blackmoon Crypto exchange in 2014. Later, she raised $10 million as part of a pre-ICO. In 2020, it turned out that Blackmoon Crypto was going to sell TON-Gram tokens. After Durov closed the TON project, the same fate awaited Perekopsky's Blackmoon Crypto.
But back to Perekopsky on Telegram. In April 2018, the messenger was blocked in the Russian Federation. This did not prevent Perekopsky, already as a vice — president of Telegram, from visiting Russia at least twice — in June, the World Cup, and then in August-his native Vologda region.
Not that it's strange when a Russian citizen returns to his native country. However, at that time, the FSB required Durov to use" universal keys " to decrypt Telegram communications, and the messenger itself was blocked. Despite this, the vice-president of the messenger calmly moved around the Russian Federation, whose authorities are generally not known for patience with people who challenge the regime. Perekopsky's visits did not seem to be unusual. In 2019, judging by the photos and videos on Instagram, he spent time in the same Vologda region.
On June 18, 2020, Telegram was unblocked in the Russian Federation. On July 9, Perekopsky joined the panel discussion held by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. In September of the same year, the vice-president of Telegram posted a video where he rides a buggy together with the governor of the Vologda Region Oleg Kuvshinnikov. By the way, the latter is currently under sanctions from Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for supporting Russian armed aggression in Ukraine.
As a result, it doesn't look like Perekopsky had any problems with the Russian authorities.
By the way, he also did not publicly condemn Russian aggression. Nor did Durov himself.
In a post on his Russian-language channel for February 24, it says not about the invasion, but about "today's events." Durov then spoke about the possibility of partially or completely restricting the operation of Telegram channels in "the countries involved for the duration of the conflict" in the event of an escalation of the "situation". However, he eventually changed his mind. He further promised that user data will be safe. However, he called the war a "tragic conflict".
Developers, designers, and partners
Publicly, Telegram is in no hurry to disclose information about the team. In LinkedIn, the search results mainly show users who lead channels in Telegram or something similar. On the LinkedIn page of Telegram itself, they claim that the company seems to have a "No LinkedIn" policy: "accounts claiming to be former or current employees have never worked in Telegram."
By the way, in one of the Telegram chats where the messenger is discussed, they commented on the information that the company has no employees in the Russian Federation: "it is logical that there are no fucking employees in Russia "and if you write" you are not an employee of TG "in EVERY contract.
At this time, we cannot directly confirm the above information. However, in 2017, Telegraph sued Anton Rosenberg for 100 million rubles. The reason is disclosure of trade secrets. Rosenberg listed the site as his place of work on Facebook Telegram.org (official website of the messenger), and also provided the court with notarized screenshots of working correspondence. Because of this, Telegram Messenger LLP allegedly terminated the contract with Telegraph. It turns out that Rosenberg was forbidden to say that he has anything to do with Telegram.
Be that as it may, we managed to find people associated with the messenger at different stages of its existence. So, on the TON blockchain website, there is information about the original project team that worked on it before it was closed. In addition to Pavel and Nikolai Durov, 11 people were included in this list. Of these, 10 were former employees of VKontakte.
Another mention of the people who developed Telegram is the UCP lawsuit in 2014. In it, Durov was accused of paying for the work of Telegram developers with VKontakte funds. There was also a list of these people: Andrey Rogozov, Andrey Lopatin, Grigory Klyushnikov, Alexey Levin, Arseny Smirnov, Vitaly Valtman, Anton Maidel.
Some of them have already been mentioned in the text or are on the TON developer list. Andrey Rogozov deserves special attention. First, he was one of the key top managers in VKontakte under Durov-he headed the development department. Dali made quite a successful career in the holding company Mail.ru Group (starting from October 2021 VK). In particular, for almost four years he was the CEO of VKontakte, and then Vice President for social platforms of the holding. In 2022, it was reported that Rogozov left this position, but continued to cooperate with VK as an adviser to the General Director for social media management.
Secondly, Rogozov still continues to cooperate with Telegram and Durov. He co-founded the TON Foundation and became the founder and CEO of The Open Platform blockchain startup. On September 13, Telegram and the TON Foundation introduced the TON Space cryptogamant, which was integrated into the messenger. It was developed by The Open Platform.
So, cryptogamanets for Telegram was created by the company of a person who until recently managed the VKontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks banned in Ukraine.
And he remains an adviser to VK, at least until he officially announced his departure.
Of course, these are not all people who work in Telegram or are associated with it. For example, the latter, it seems, can be attributed to Alena Sofina. In her LinkedIn post, she indicated that she has been working under contract in Telegram as an Animator since 2019. Sofina also noted that she holds the position of Lead Designer of Artemy Lebedev Studio. The company of the same Lebedev, who distributes anti-Ukrainian propaganda, came to the Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russian Federation, and his assets were recently recovered in favor of our state. She is the author of some popular stickerpacks and emojis on Telegram. For example, this pack is available for premium users.
The situation is similar with illustrator / animator Olga Shibaeva, who identified herself as a freelance employee of Telegram on LinkedIn. Judging by her Instagram, she also made a number of stickers for the messenger, and still lives in the Russian Federation. That is, it pays taxes to the aggressor country.
As a result, it is obvious that Telegram's statement about the absence of any ties with the Russian Federation is not true. Throughout its history, the messenger is somehow connected with Russia, in particular, the origin of the team, TON investors and contractors. Why would a company tell a lie in a public response to allegations of cooperation with the Kremlin? Everyone should answer this question for themselves.
PS When this material was being prepared for publication, the Senator of the Russian Federation and Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Viktor Bondarev reacted to the appearance of channels in WhatsApp:
"Of particular concern is the update of the WhatsApp application from September 13, 2023, which made it possible to create news channels on this messenger. Previously, this feature was only possible in Telegram, which is friendly to the information space of the Russian Federation. This WhatsApp update will be available in 150 countries by the end of 2023."
Telegram has not yet commented on this statement. We will add a response from the company's management if it appears.
This is the first text in a series of materials about Telegram. Thanks to Yaroslav Azhnyuk, Igor Pilipiv (Ekonomicheskaya Pravda) and the Molfar OSINT community for their help in preparing the material. New texts from this loop expect Vector and"Economic truth".