Biography | Pavel Durov — The Le Bourget Tarmac Where a French Warrant Landed

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On Saturday 24 August 2024, at about 20:00 CEST, Pavel Durov stepped off a private jet at Paris-Le Bourget Airport and walked into a warrant that was valid only on French soil.

The aircraft, an Embraer Legacy 600, had come from Baku.

Le Monde timed the landing near 19:30. French television and later reporting put the arrest on the tarmac around eight.

The Air Transport Gendarmerie made the stop. Investigators from the national anti-fraud office and the office that investigates violence against minors had opened a case on 8 July against persons unnamed.

Durov holds French citizenship as well as Russian and Emirati papers. The warrant could not follow him until he chose a French runway.

Le Bourget is not Charles de Gaulle. It is the old Paris field, opened in 1919, now used for business jets and the Paris Air Show.

The 1937 terminal still faces the field. The pin is the airport itself.

Four days later, on 28 August, an investigating judge placed him under formal investigation on twelve counts tied to alleged crimes committed through the app, including complicity in the circulation of child-sexual-abuse material and drug trafficking.

He posted five million euros in bail. He was forbidden to leave France and ordered to report to police twice a week.

Those conditions were later eased, then lifted in November 2025. He has not been convicted.

The case remains an investigation, not a verdict.

Photo: DiscoA340, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Old passenger terminal at Le Bourget, photographed 16 July 2022.