Telegram founder’s ‘ex-partner’ wants a cut

A woman who claims to be the mother of three of Pavel Durov’s children has insisted that she is entitled to own part of Telegram despite never being married to the messaging platform’s billionaire CEO.

Irina Bolgar initially announced that the Russian-born entrepreneur is the father of her children in June and provided documents confirming his paternity to Forbes in August. The woman claims to have met Durov in 2012 and had three children with him between 2013 and 2017. She says she lived with her children in St Petersburg and moved to Dubai to be with Durov in 2018. However, since being denied a residence permit in the UAE in 2020, she has been living with her children in Switzerland.

Durov himself has not commented on the woman’s claims but has admitted that he became a sperm donor several years ago and has more than 100 biological children.

In a new post on Instagram on Wednesday, Bolgar claimed that although she and Durov were never officially married, Telegram should be considered their jointly-owned property.

The woman stated that while all “significant family assets” were registered in Durov’s name, she had access to them “through agreements and powers of attorney, which, while allowing their use, did not fully protect my rights and interests and, as it turned out, could be violated at any time.”

Bolgar claims she was “consistently given assurances and promises” that she and her children would always have access to these resources and could use them to purchase “expensive real estate” that could serve as a “suitable” home for the children, but that these promises were never kept.

“All of our verbal and written agreements were violated by him, and his promises went unfulfilled,” the woman wrote.

She went on to state that although all of their jointly acquired property, including Telegram, was registered in Durov’s name, in some countries “it is possible to recognize a de facto marriage as official” while in others “you can claim a share of the jointly acquired property under civil law,” Bolgar pointed out.

Previously, Bolgar had filed several lawsuits against Durov, accusing the billionaire of failing to pay child support and of “serious acts of violence” against their son. In August, the woman claimed that a Swiss court had stripped Durov of his parental rights.

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