Telegram has been going through a very turbulent period since last week. Company founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France. Although French and European Union officials say they are not involved in this investigation, it is stated that an investigation will be launched for the Telegram application.

Telegram faces a European Union investigation

Telegram allegedly misreported the number of users in the European Union to avoid stricter regulations. In this context, the EU will examine whether Telegram accurately disclosed how many monthly active users it has in 27 countries.

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Under the Digital Services Act (DSA), services with more than 45 million monthly users in the EU are considered “very large platforms”. Large platforms will be subject to stricter rules on content control, advertising transparency and data protection.

Telegram claimed to have 41 million EU users earlier this year. However, when asked for new data, it did not give a specific number, only that it was less than 45 million. EU authorities suspect that the real number of Telegram users in Europe exceeds 45 million.

If it is proven to have misreported its statistics, it could face serious penalties under the DSA. Accordingly, fines of up to 6 percent of the company’s global annual revenue can be imposed. With an estimated 1 billion users worldwide, financial penalties could hit the company hard.

The investigation is the result of a crackdown on Telegram and its CEO Pavel Durov. French authorities had filed a criminal complaint against Durov, claiming that Telegram had failed to comply with terrorism and propaganda requests.