Pavel Durov Under Pressure, Making Mistakes
Note: This collection of notes from my research for "The Telegram Labyrinth" identifies the defensive financial measures Pavel Durov has taken between May 2025 and December 2025. Most of the information originated in Russian social media; for example, online articles, Telegram messages, items in PCNews.ru, and VKontakte pages. I collected my notes and continue to sort and resort them. Remember, the statements in this essay are from my notes and should be viewed as working hypotheses. Verify before you trust any of my observations. These are speculations I captured as I was writing “The Telegram Labyrinth” and as I draft my 2026 lectures to cyber investigators. Keep the disclaimers in mind as you review this briefing document.
I created many note cards about Pavel Durov’s arrest at Paris–Le Bourget Airport on August 24, 2024. The scene could have come from a Raymond Chandler novel.
A Raymond Chandler-Type of Noir Moment
The clock stumbled toward 8:00 PM, and the air at Paris–Le Bourget Airport was already thick with trouble. The J3 cybercrime unit was in no hurry. The private jet stopped. The SWAT team moved on Pavel Durov. A velvet hammer—quiet, but he’d remember the strike. Pasha didn’t struggle when they put him in the vehicle. He glanced and smiled at his girl, a ballet dancer with eyes that could make a man forget the handcuffs. She stood alone on the tarmac, her silhouette cut sharp against the dying light. Pavel make his call, and he didn’t waste time on amateurs. Kaminski Avocat. The high‑priced muscle with law degrees, connections, and offices in Saint‑Germain where the rent’s higher than a Telegram Messenger user boosting meth. Maître David‑Olivier Kaminski was the kind of lawyer who could talk a wolf out of its teeth. A few days and a thousand questions later, Pavel tasted freedom, but it was the kind you rent by the hour, not the kind you own. Kaminski kept him out of a cell, but the leash was continuous judicial supervision: Charges, bail, no passport, and regular reporting in person to the French authorities. Mme Johanna Brousse allowed him to stay in the five‑star Hôtel de Crillon on the Place de la Concorde. But no leaving France. Like a 10-year-old school truant, he had to report to the judicial authorities daily, then weekly, and finally every two weeks. After the arrest and on release, Pavel Durov, founder of VKontakte and now owner of Telegram—a messaging company with roughly one billion users—played the role of Champion of Free Speech and Privacy. Chin up, eyes steady, cynical smile. The kind of act you rehearse in front of a mirror when the stakes are high.
For months, he lived on a short leash—no. In March 2025, Mme Brousse finally loosened the spiked collar so he could fly back to Dubai for a limited stay. The criminal probe continued. Slowly. French processes do not operate on Internet time. By July 10, 2025, the rules were changed: He could spend up to two weeks at a time in Dubai, as long as he notified the investigating judge in advance and came back on schedule to check in. The self‑styled GOAT of Russian technology and icon to privacy champions could enjoy the desert air, but when the timer chimed, like a bad child, he had to be back in France, playing nice with M. Brousse and her team. The GOAT, the father of a claimed 100 children, the multi‑millionaire gets what Mme Brousse, who took down the Encro dark phone operation, makes the rules.
French prisons are not designed for comfort. Fleury‑Mérogis, outside Paris, is Europe’s largest prison. It is notorious for its overcrowding, violence, and number of suicides. La Santé in Paris has housed “very important” prisoners, including terrorists and organized‑crime figures, and is used as a reference point whenever high‑profile detainees are discussed. Kaminski’s job was to keep Pavel’s name on the Crillon’s registry and off the intake sheet at Fleury or La Santé. In my notes I wrote: “Someone must have explained to Pavel that the French can put him behind bars for years, and then squeeze every one of his associates, their companies, and their financial networks with the blunt instrument of the bureaucracy that invented red tape.” Telegram could be finished unless he rolled over. Pavel rolled.
Pavel Durov's drama is not in a work of fiction. He was a French citizen. Chained to French paperwork wrapped and in red tape like a mummy in the Louvre. The trial? Maybe in 2026? A writer could tell the story and title it "Pavel's Peril."
Flash Forward: 2025-January 2026
Last week, I took some time to catch up on Pavel’s activities since finishing my monograph, “The Telegram Labyrinth.” The stress of his arrest and the ritual check‑ins with Mme Brousse were uncharted territory for him. Writing hefty checks to Kaminski Avocat didn’t faze him; he still had millions from the forced sale of VKontakte in 2014, and his crypto investments provided a comfortable cushion. But even with deep pockets, he was forced to show a measure of cooperation. This is a point his expensive lawyer David‑Olivier Kaminski likely made as clear as the crypto hype in Telegram Messenger ads. After all, French prisons aren’t the Hôtel de Crillon where Pavel holes up when he’s in Paris.
On a yellow card, I scribbled: “Does he realize the French can put him behind bars for years?” The message was simple: Telegram’s future depends, in part, on how he responds to Mme Brousse's cracking whip.
For someone who styles himself as the icon of free speech and privacy, Pavel now finds sits in an uncomfortable chair. He missed the first wave of the AI boom because occupied with the SEC over Telegram’s ill‑fated GRAM token funding. He settled without a criminal charge. Telegram paid the $20 million fine in June 2020. That debacle forced him to create and then give the TON Foundation in Zug, Switzerland, Telegram's proprietary blockchain technology. He rebranded GRAMcoin and then said, "The TON Foundation controls TONcoin." Is that accurate? The TON Foundation seems to be an extension of Telegram. The optics worked. Telegram officially handed over the keys to his crypto project in 2020, and the Swiss‑registered Foundation ecosystem ramped up through 2023, just as the AI mania raged.
By 2024, Telegram was humming along, encouraging gambling egames, ignoring rampant money laundering, and the gray‑ and black-zone activity on the platform. Pavel continued to champion free speech and rail against government interference in private enterprise. Then, suddenly, he was arrested.
It is 2026. Now what?
Pavel Durov is on the defensive. If he ends up behind bars, Telegram lacks a mature, American‑style succession plan. This is a serious operational and governance vulnerability. Someone like Vladimir Vedeneev or possibly another senior executive could try to keep the machinery turning, but replacing a founder‑owner under criminal pressure is difficult. The GOAT has quietly wandered from building platform features to financial engineering. Some of his moves are perplexing.
The TON Foundation allowed or assisted Steve Yun, its former president, with setting up TON Ventures, a vehicle designed to invest in TON‑centric companies. This new "company" appears to be the venture arm of the Telegram ecosystem. A crypto professional named Max Crown joined the TON Foundation and became its president. A few months earlier, Manuel “Manny” Stotz succeeded Steve Yun before moving onto the TON Foundation board and then founding a second Telegram-linked company named TON Strategy Company.
In August 2025, TON Strategy Company acquired the VERB shell and then closed a roughly $558 million private placement to fund its attempt at a “Michael Saylor strategy” for TONcoin: A listed vehicle that holds large TON positions on its balance sheet. By September 2025, its stock began trading on NASDAQ under the ticker TONX. The following month, Nasdaq issued a reprimand over a $272 million TONcoin purchase executed without a shareholder vote—a governance breach that raised serious compliance questions. As of January 16, 2026, TONcoin trades around the low‑$2 range, a troubling sign for a company whose business model rests on a volatile crypto treasury. Manny bought TONcoin when its value was about $5.00. Now TONcoin has cratered to less than $2.00 per TONcoin.
New executives cycled into TON Strategy Company. Veronika Kapustina (whose background appears sparse—few public records, no visible publications, and limited financial experience beyond time at Morgan Stanley) took over as president. In my notes, I remarked: “Manny operates two companies: Koenigsweg Holdings and Kingsway Capital. There seem to be a lot of Russian connections to both.”
Just as TON Strategy was preparing for takeoff, a second shell play popped into existence. AlphaTON Capital Corp announced plans to acquire the NASDAQ‑listed shell of Portage Biotech Inc. and reposition it as a digital asset treasury. In 2025 disclosures, AlphaTON signaled its intention to acquire around $100 million in TONcoin and to build infrastructure for “AI mining” data centers—facilities colocated with partners that would provide compute power for Telegram’s delayed AI service, Cocoon. Telegram would broker access to data centers with excess AI capacity, while AlphaTON aimed to profit from both the data‑center stakes and continued pharmaceutical work via its subsidiary Cyncado Therapeutics.
Let’s recap. Two financially engineered companies are now listed on NASDAQ, both built on shells and aggressive TONcoin tactics. Pavel is shuttling between Paris and Dubai to check in with French authorities. US regulators have begun scrutinizing the operations of both TON Strategy Company and AlphaTON Capital Corp, focusing on governance, disclosure, and market‑impact risks. Meanwhile, the broader crypto market is losing momentum, and TONcoin continues to drift down, with occasional spikes that look more like defense than organic demand. The French trial, with the possibility of a criminal sentence and a substantial fine, looms in 2026.
Nothing to See Here
What could go wrong with these management actions?
Financial analysts have observed that both public‑market vehicles are now on the SEC’s radar, with basic management procedures—such as shareholder approvals—sometimes neglected in the rush to execute large, market‑moving transactions. Crypto‑focused publications have highlighted that AlphaTON’s head of business development previously worked with Red Shark Ventures (now RSV Capital). This is a Russia‑linked firm with an office in Canada. The high-profile Moscow‑based financier Yuri Mitin now manages the North American operation. AlphaTON Capital moved to sever ties with the firm run by Andrei Grachev. DWF MaaS, a crypto market‑making outfit tied to Grachev, was reportedly paid $15 million in TONcoin plus $35,000 to end his job as AlphaTON’s capital manager. In my notes, I summed it up this way: “AlphaTON is scrambling to clean up its ties to Digital Wave / DWF companies, which are connected to several prominent Russian financial professionals.”
Both TON Strategy Company and AlphaTON Capital have reprimanded by the US Securities & Exchange Commission.
Are regulators paying attention to what Telegram and the TON Foundation have been doing at this frenetic pace?
The answer is: “Yes. Well, sort of.”
In January 2026, French market commentary linked TONcoin’s depressed valuation to the overhang of Pavel Durov’s criminal case and the associated regulatory uncertainty, noting that related individuals and entities could face spillover risks. US authorities have increasingly focused on Russian‑linked cryptocurrency flows and their effect on market integrity, a category into which large TONcoin positions naturally fall. Europol has stepped up scrutiny of shell structures and cross‑border digital‑asset flows set up since mid‑2025, with particular interest in complex treasury and “AI mining” arrangements. Notifications and commentary around DWF MaaS and similar market‑making shops highlight redemptions of high‑risk positions and contract changes designed to shield insiders from volatile investor behavior.
Several observations deserve attention:
Possible market manipulation in plain sight. Unidentified actors appear to be aggressively supporting TONcoin’s price just to keep it from collapsing below key psychological levels, such as $1.50, by repeatedly buying size into weakness. These are likely well‑funded insiders or TONcoin “whales” desperate to protect their own large stakes. Rather than organic demand, it looks like artificial support—propping up an illusion of stability while masking structural fragility.
TON Strategy Company: Crisis of credibility. TON Strategy Company is scrambling to push its share price out of the low single digits, hoping to salvage credibility after spending hundreds of millions of dollars on TONcoin without proper shareholder approval, drawing two SEC warnings in the process. Executive churn only underscores the instability. The firm wants to mimic Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin‑treasury playbook, but the comparison is thin: Bitcoin trades near high five‑figure levels, while TONcoin hovers in the low dollars as of early 2026.
AlphaTON Capital: Regulatory red flags. AlphaTON Capital is already entangled in regulatory and reputational issues, including shell‑company pivots, complex biotech‑plus‑crypto positioning, and the need to unwind relationships with Russian‑linked market‑making firms. Its plan to accumulate large TONcoin holdings while simultaneously building AI infrastructure and maintaining a biotech subsidiary stretches governance and compliance capacity to the limit.
Shell games and regulatory blind spots. Despite mounting evidence of financial engineering, shell structures, and unorthodox, possibly reckless market maneuvers designed to support both TONcoin and Telegram’s strategic position, regulators have mostly confined themselves to warnings, inquiries, and incremental steps. For now, government watchdogs are content to observe and issue letters, leaving investors exposed and the market uncertain about the viability of these companies.
The looming shadow of legal reckoning. Pavel Durov’s criminal trial, expected in mid‑ to late‑2026, hangs like a sword over Telegram and the TON ecosystem. Until the charges are resolved, uncertainty and risk will continue to haunt both organizations, undermining confidence and casting doubt on their future.
In short: behind the scenes, desperate measures, regulatory, and procedural missteps persist. The façade of stability is cracking and the next shock could be decisive.
On one of my notecards, I recorded a quote in 2024 when I first learned that Pavel Durov styled himself as the GOAT of Russian entrepreneurs—the greatest of all time Russian entrepreneur. I don’t know where I saw the statement. It is not mine, but it captures what those investing in Telegram should know: “Don’t mistake a goat’s beard for a Derby winner’s tail.”
Stephen E Arnold, January 25, 2026