Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of instant messaging app Telegram, plans to leave his fortune to the more than 100 children he has fathered.
The Russian-born tech tycoon has revealed that his estate will be split between his six children from relationships and the scores of others whom he fathered through sperm donation.
In a wide-ranging interview published Thursday in French political magazine Le Point, 40-year-old Durov revealed that he does not differentiate between his legal children with three different women and those conceived with the sperm he donated.
“They are all my children and will all have the same rights! I don’t want them to tear each other apart after my death,” he said, after revealing that he recently wrote his will.
Durov revealed the number of children he has fathered on his social media last year. He said a doctor told him that it was his “civic duty” to donate his “high quality donor material,” which he did over the course of 15 years.
According to Bloomberg, Durov is worth an estimated $13.9 billion, but he dismissed such estimates as “theoretical,” telling Le Point: “Since I’m not selling Telegram, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have this money in a bank account. My liquid assets are much lower – and they don’t come from Telegram: they come from my investment in bitcoin in 2013.”
Regardless, his children will have a long wait for their inheritance. He said: “I decided that my children would not have access to my fortune until a period of 30 years has elapsed, starting from today. I want them to live like normal people, to build themselves up alone, to learn to trust themselves, to be able to create, not to be dependent on a bank account. I want to specify that I make no difference between my children: there are those who were conceived naturally and those who come from my sperm donations.”
When asked why he has written his will now, Durov, who lives in Dubai, said: “My work involves risks – defending freedoms earns you many enemies, including within powerful states. I want to protect my children, but also the company I created, Telegram. I want Telegram to forever remain faithful to the values I defend.”
Telegram, which has more than a billion monthly users, is known for its high-level encryption and limited oversight on what its users post.
Last year, Durov was arrested in Paris on charges relating to a host of crimes, including allegations that his platform was complicit in aiding money launderers, drug traffickers and people spreading child pornography.
Durov, who is Telegram’s sole shareholder, has denied the charges, which he described as “absurd.”
“Just because criminals use our messaging service among many others doesn’t make those who run it criminals,” he told the French magazine.
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