The official reason for banning Telegram in Russia – its refusal to let the secret service decipher user messages, as required by Russian law, to “prevent terrorism” – might not be the real one.
Revealed today by the Russian business daily RBC, an informal note written by an employee of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Roman Antipkin, to his colleagues, tells an entirely different story.
“This story is not about that, can’t you understand? It is not about [encryption] keys and terrorism (…). Pasha [diminutive for Pavel] Durov has decided to become a new Mavrodi,” Antipkin is quoted as writing, in a reference to Sergei Mavrodi, an Russian fraudster who founded a huge Ponzi scheme in the 1990s.
“If they will launch their own cryptocurrency, we’ll get an absolutely uncontrollable financial system in Russia. This won’t be just bitcoins for mavericks, it will be simple, safe and uncontrolled. This compromises our national security (…). All drugs, illegal cash, organ trade operations will be performed with the help of Pasha’s cryptocurrency, and he will say: ‘I have nothing to do with this. But you can ban words used by terrorists,’” the FSB employee wrote, according to RBC.
The letter refers to the TON cryptocurrency project, which Telegram plans to develop after raising more than $2 billion in its ICO.
RBC learned from several sources that Antipkin participated in a variety of meetings on behalf of the Federal Security Service — in particular, meetings dedicated to the implementation of the legislation on electronic communications.
But Antipkin denied to be the author of any letter. “Everyone lies, I have no comments and I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” he said to an RBC journalist who reached him on the phone.
Neither the FSB’s press service nor Pavel Durov answered RBC’s questions.
Adopted in 2016 and dubbed ‘Yarovaya law’ or ‘Big Brother law,’ this legislation requires instant messengers, ISPs, mobile operators and other “organizers of information distribution” to add additional coding to transmitted electronic messages so that the FSB can decipher them.
