The Nepalese authorities have banned the Telegram messenger. Meanwhile, media outlets are reporting that Pavel Durov’s company is preparing to open an office in Russia. The tech entrepreneur himself denies this information.
The Nepalese authorities have banned the Telegram messenger. Meanwhile, media outlets are reporting that Pavel Durov’s company is preparing to open an office in Russia. The tech entrepreneur himself denies this information.
As The Kathmandu Post reports, citing the local telecommunications regulator, the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has instructed all internet service providers to immediately restrict access to the platform, stating that it is increasingly being used for criminal activities due to the rise in cases of online fraud and money laundering on the platform.
«Given the misuse of Telegram for online fraud and money laundering, all service providers have been ordered to immediately restrict access to the platform,» the NTA said.
Recall that in 2023, Nepalese authorities banned the social network TikTok in the country because its content was «harmful to social harmony.» The ban was lifted in August last year.
And recently, a decision to block Telegram was made in Vietnam. According to the local authorities, the reason was the platform’s refusal to cooperate with the Vietnamese government in combating alleged crimes committed by the messenger’s users.
Meanwhile, Telegram will open an official representative office in Russia, starting to comply with the requirements of the «landing» law. This law obliges large IT companies to register and place part of their infrastructure in the Russian Federation.
It is not known when Telegram began the process of registering a branch in the Russian Federation. However, according to data for 2024, the company has not yet taken steps in this direction.
By July 2025, an electronic registration form from Telegram appeared on the Roskomnadzor website and a personal account for the company was created — this is one of the stages of the «landing» procedure. Currently, the process of registering a branch is at the approval stage.
The so-called «landing» law came into force in October 2021. According to the document, all foreign IT companies with an audience of more than 500 thousand Russian users per day are required to register in the Russian Federation, open an office, and publicly post its address on their official website.
In addition, companies must:
In the event of refusal to implement the law, the Russian authorities may:
The founder of Telegram Messenger Inc. Pavel Durov responded to media reports about the assumption of preparations for the opening of a Telegram office in the Russian Federation, which appeared on Thursday, July 17.
On his personal Telegram channel, Durov repeated a fragment from a previous recording in which he criticized the «media press» on the service. «Perhaps we are dealing not with innocent mistakes of journalists, but with a targeted campaign to discredit Telegram,» the entrepreneur quoted himself, accompanying it with a postscript with the text «100%.»
