French authorities arrested 55 men this week in a nationwide crackdown on a suspected pedophile ring operating through the Telegram messaging app, officials announced on Thursday, May 22.
The suspects, aged 25 to 75, include a priest, a paramedic, and a music teacher. They were detained across 42 French departments on charges of possessing, distributing, and repeatedly viewing child sexual abuse material involving victims under the age of 10, according to France’s Office for Minors’ Protection (OFMIN).
The arrests, conducted from Monday to Thursday, followed a 10-month investigation by OFMIN’s specialized task force. The suspects allegedly communicated via Telegram and were linked to "extremely dangerous" pedophiles already imprisoned since last summer, said Quentin Bevan, head of OFMIN’s operational unit.
The operation began last summer after authorities identified individuals suspected of abusing children and sharing illicit content on Telegram. “Tracking down these offenders required months of undercover work, including analyzing thousands of exchanges and detecting illegal imagery,” Bevan told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
OFMIN previously issued the warrant leading to the 2024 arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in Paris. Durov remains under formal investigation for failing to prevent the spread of illegal content on the platform. After extended questioning, he was charged with multiple counts of neglecting to curb extremist and terrorist material.
Investigators have confronted Durov with cases involving child abuse, drug trafficking, scams, arms sales, and even contract killings. While Durov has since taken steps to comply with French regulations, Bevan stated that Telegram is still “barely fulfilling its legal obligations.”
In a recent development, Durov accused the head of France’s DGSE foreign intelligence service of pressuring Telegram to ban pro-conservative Romanian accounts ahead of elections—a claim the DGSE denies.
Durov has defended Telegram’s efforts to combat child exploitation, posting on X this week: “Falsely implying Telegram did nothing to remove child abuse material is a manipulation tactic.”