The investigation, published on June 10, claims that unlike WhatsApp and Signal, Telegram does not use end-to-end encryption by default. According to the journalists, 98% of users communicate in regular chats, whose messages are stored on the messenger's servers, so whoever controls the server can access the correspondence.
Antigua, St. Petersburg and IP Addresses
According to the investigators, Pavel Durov handed over the arrangement of Telegram's entire infrastructure to Global Network Management (GNM), a company from the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda. GNM provided the messenger with more than 10,000 IP addresses. The owner of GNM is named as Vladimir Vedeneyev, a native of Tolyatti. According to him, half of GNM's employees are in Russia, where the company has an office in St. Petersburg. Vedeneyev was the messenger's financial director and had the right to sign documents on behalf of Durov and the company, although, according to the journalists, some former Telegram managers did not even know of such an official.
Until 2020, the Telegram IP addresses now controlled by GNM belonged to the St. Petersburg company Globalnet. Until recently, its beneficiary was Vedeneyev, but in 2024 he transferred the company to relatives and to Roman Venediktov, an acquaintance of the Durov family. In spring 2022, Globalnet became the first among Russian peering platforms to implement a user traffic control system at the request of Roskomnadzor using Deep Packet Inspection technology (DPI inspects internet traffic and blocks access to prohibited sites).
Links to Government Clients
Globalnet, in particular, provides communication services to Russian state-owned enterprises in the defense sector: the sanctioned Kurchatov Institute and the Main Research Computing Center of the Administrative Department of the President of Russia (GlavNIVTs). GlavNIVTs is a closed analytical center working in the interests of the FSB, FSO, MVD and Ministry of Defense; it engages in mass surveillance of Russians on the internet and is responsible for developing a nationwide video surveillance system with facial recognition.
According to the journalists, Vedeneyev also transferred the St. Petersburg company Electrotelecom to relatives. It provided Telegram with more than 5,000 IP addresses. One of Electrotelecom's most important government clients is the FSB. According to the official version, the company provides the security service with installation and maintenance services for a 'special information transmission complex for conducting operational-search activities'.
'This means that the server infrastructure of Telegram is managed by those who simultaneously service the FSB's secret complexes used for surveillance of citizens,' the investigators conclude.
The publication recalls that Telegram's 40-year-old founder, Pavel Durov, has repeatedly visited Russia since emigrating in 2014. According to a leak from the FSB border service, he came to Russia more than 50 times, especially actively during serious financial problems in 2019–2021. In 2021, Durov raised $1 billion in financing from the Russian state bank VTB, Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Capital, and the investment group Aton. Shortly before that, Roskomnadzor unexpectedly dropped all claims against the messenger and stopped blocking it.
1
