On April 5, 2013, an accident occurred on one of the main streets of St. Petersburg, which is supposed to radically change the fate of Russia's most popular social network. In the story around the founder of VKontakte Pavel Durov, every day there are more and more questions than answers. And his mysterious and secretive nature only increases public interest in this fascinating epic.
To begin with, we will try to restore the tangled chronology of events. On that date, at the intersection of Nevsky Prospect and the Griboedov Canal Embankment, a white Mercedes refused to comply with the requirement of the traffic police officer, who asked the driver to stop the car. Instead, the car not only did not stop, but ran into a policeman, dragging him on the hood a few meters. Later it was found that the car belongs to the vice-president of "VKontakte" Ilya Perekopsky. Nevertheless, the road service officer identified the driver Pavel Durov from a photograph, and for some reason this happened only a week after the accident.
As you know, Pavel Durov never goes behind the wheel and prefers to use public transport, which contradicts the testimony of the traffic police officer. Moreover, according to Durov's colleagues, he was not in the city at all that day. A few days later, operatives came to the office of VKontakte and Pavel Durov's home and searched. A criminal case was initiated into the incident, in which Durov was held as a witness. On April 19, the founder of the social network was invited for interrogation, for which, for some unknown reason, he did not appear.
However, further events began to evolve even more interesting. Shortly after the accident, the VKontakte ownership structure unexpectedly changed: last week it became known that 48% of the social network owned by entrepreneurs Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev were bought by a consortium of investors led by the United Capital Fund Ilya Scherbovich. The remaining 52% are controlled by Pavel Durov together with the leader of the Russian Forbes list, Alisher Usmanov.
Of course, the strange coincidence in time of the mysterious accident on Nevsky Prospect and the redistribution of VKontakte shares could not but raise suspicions about the relationship of these two events. Some sources claim that this is due to a certain conflict that Durov could have with the Presidential Administration. This version is supported by the fact that the shares of Mirilashvili and Leviev went to the fund, whose head is on the boards of directors of the state corporations Rosneft and Transneft close to the Kremlin. All this gave the bloggers a reason to express assumptions about the unfriendly takeover and even the seizure of the Russian social network by the state structures.
Last weekend, the Parfenov program on Dozhd TV channel was agreed to by the newly-made owner of almost half of the Vkontakte shares Ilya Scherbovich, who dispelled rumors about the political motivation of the deal and said that the purchase was due only to his interest in this promising and actively developing enterprise.
In the same program, the sensational news was told: allegedly Pavel Durov with several top managers from VKontakte went to the city of Buffalo (New York, USA), where he rented huge servers to start work on creating a new social network. Parfenov also said that the Russian patent office had already received an application for the registration of the Telegraph trademark (with an emphasis on the first syllable): this is what the new social network is supposed to be called.
On Monday, Durov, in his own harsh manner, refuted the information voiced by “Rain” and stated that he had not been in the United States for a year and was not going to go there in the near future. At the same time, he confirmed the statements that he was implementing a project in Buffalo, but he was associated with the creation of a cloud hosting service, not a new social network.
“We will leave Parfenov to found a new social network in 2013,” he said caustically at the conclusion of his open letter.
It is noteworthy that the statement Durov spread friendly site Siliconrus.ru. Previously, all the official communiqués of the founder of VKontakte were published on his own page on his own social network.
After April 19, Durov did not appear for questioning by the investigator, he was sent a re-subpoena, demanding that he, along with Perekopsky, still visit the police station on April 22. The repeated request was not fulfilled, and now, in accordance with the procedural legislation, investigators have the right to bring them for questioning forcibly.
On April 22, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, referring to Sergey Kapitonov, senior assistant to the head of the St. Petersburg GSU RF IC for press relations, reported that the investigation did not know the location of Ilya Perekopsky, the founder of VKontakte and his right hand. At the moment, no one can say exactly where Pavel Durov is. However, if you are even slightly familiar with this person, then you are surely aware that the information about the movements of the head of the social network has never been particularly advertised due to its non-public nature. Durov essentially does not communicate with journalists and periodically publishes his statements and comments only when he considers it necessary.
Meanwhile, at the end of last week, sources in the Vkontakte guide told the RBC Daily publication that Durov is currently in Switzerland. Presumably, at the time of the interrogation on April 19, he was there and therefore could not appear. However, as stated by the representatives of the Investigative Committee, if the head of the social network continues to ignore the demands of the investigation, he can be transferred to the rank of a suspect and placed on the federal and, possibly, international wanted list.
However, the most surprising thing is that Durov himself, who has recently become too talkative in social networks, absolutely does not comment on the situation with his alleged problems with the law. Nevertheless, receiving comments from Durov is, apparently, only a matter of time. If we do not read them on his VKontakte page, then maybe in a few weeks we will get to know them in the framework of the materials of the criminal case. It seems that the dock of the defendants to the Russian Internet tycoon is unavoidable, and he doesn’t pull a political refugee at all.
The article is based on materials .
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