Six years before Pavel Durov landed in a French holding cell, the antiestablishment founder of the messaging app Telegram was in a very different position in France: having lunch with President Emmanuel Macron.
At the lunch in 2018, which hasn’t been previously reported, Macron invited the Russian-born Durov to move Telegram to Paris, people familiar with the discussions said. Durov declined at the time. The French leader even discussed granting French citizenship to him, one of the people said. A French official said Durov asked Macron for citizenship.
