Pavel Durov, the founder and chief executive of Telegram, has said his arrest by the French authorities was “misguided”.

In his first comments since his detention last month, the Russian-born tech entrepreneur said investigators could have approached the company behind the messaging app rather than arresting him.

He acknowledged that the app was not perfect, but denied it was an “anarchic paradise” or was associated with abuse.

“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start legal action against the service itself,” Mr Durov wrote on his Telegram channel early on Friday.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.

“But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day. 

“Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”

‘Growing pains’

Mr Durov, who has French citizenship, was arrested at Le Bourget airport, outside Paris, late last month as part of an investigation into Telegram being used for child sexual abuse and drug trafficking.

Telegram is also accused of refusing to share information and documents with investigators when required by law.

The billionaire was released on bail of €5 million, but told he was not allowed to leave the country and must report to French police stations on a weekly basis.

Both Mr Durov and Telegram have denied the allegations against them. It is incredibly rare that a top executive of a social media platform is being personally charged for illicit transactions carried out through its app.

But he did concede that an “abrupt increase” in users on Telegram had “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform”.

Telegram was recently blamed for the spread of disinformation that led to the far-Right riots across English cities last month.

Moderators did remove some groups used to organise the violence, but cyber security experts claim its moderation systems are weaker than other social media companies.