Telegram founder Pavel Durov stated he desires to go away his almost $20 billion fortune to 100 youngsters he’s fathered by means of sperm donations.
The eccentric tech founder has a historical past of tangling with the Kremlin over free speech and was charged by French officers final 12 months for allegedly permitting intercourse abuse and drug trafficking crimes to run rampant on his encrypted messaging app. He has denied these prices.
The billionaire has written a will that splits his $17.1 billion fortune, in accordance with Forbes, amongst his six youngsters with three companions, in addition to 100 youngsters throughout 12 nations he fathered by means of sperm donations stretching again 15 years, Durov advised France’s Le Level journal on Thursday.
“I want to specify that I make no difference between my children: there are those who were conceived naturally and those who come from my sperm donations,” he advised Le Level.
“They are all my children and will all have the same rights! I don’t want them to tear each other apart after my death.”
Durov, 40, stated he doesn’t need his youngsters to have entry to his fortune for 30 years.
“I want them to live like normal people, to build themselves up alone, to learn to trust themselves, to be able to create, not to be dependent on a bank account,” he advised the journal.
Durov faces accusations from the mom of three of his youngsters that he withheld monetary help, led a secret double life and struck their then-three-year-old son so exhausting it despatched him “across the room,” in accordance with two prison complaints filed in 2023 and 2024.
He has a considerably weird social media presence, posting a photograph of himself shirtless in a barn with child goats earlier this 12 months to want Telegram customers a cheerful Easter.
Years earlier, in a 2017 Instagram submit that went viral, he mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin for virtually the identical factor – calling on customers to submit pictures of themselves bare-chested within the “Putin Shirtless Challenge.”
Durov had been the goal of Russian state blacklisting after he refused to close down activists on VKontakte, a platform he created often known as the Russian model of Fb, together with a gaggle led by the late opposition chief Alexei Navalny.
Durov reportedly fled the nation after he was concerned in a visitors accident that left a police officer barely injured. Across the identical time, a personal fairness agency linked to the Kremlin purchased a hefty stake in VK and pushed out the founding companions who backed Durov, in accordance with The Moscow Occasions.
In March, Durov stated he had returned to his house in Dubai after Paris officers had arrested him over the summer time and banned him from leaving the nation.
His encrypted messaging app Telegram, which boasts greater than 1 billion lively customers, has turn into an indispensable communication instrument through the Russia-Ukraine warfare.
Authorities officers have used the app to ship out air raid warnings and residents have documented warfare horrors firsthand.
However the app has come beneath fireplace for additionally permitting extremist teams just like the Islamic State, white nationalists and conspiracy theorists to make use of the platform.
