The fertility clinic where mothers-to-be can have one of Telegram tycoon Pavel Durov's children - as he promises to leave £17billion fortune to his '106 sons and daughters'

A Moscow fertility clinic claims to offer would-be mothers the chance to conceive a child by one of Russia 's most successful entrepreneurs for free.
Pavel Durov, the billionaire founder of messaging platform Telegram, has fathered six children with three different partners.
But the 40-year-old is believed to have around 100 more after he donated sperm on a mass scale to dozens of couples in 12 different countries.
AltraVita IVF clinic - a facility located in Moscow's southwestern Akademicheskaya region known for its high concentration of scientific and educational establishments - boasts not only that it has samples of Durov's sperm, but that the tech tycoon will finance the whole procedure.
'Pavel Durov is willing to finance all the IVF protocols that use his sperm. It is a very generous contribution to society from someone who wants to help those dreaming of becoming parents,' the offer on AltraVita's website reads.
Speaking to Russia's RTVI outlet, AltraVita CEO Sergei Yakovenko - also an associate professor of biophysics at the prestigious Moscow State University - confirmed the offer is real and explained he was a long-time friend of the Telegram founder.
It comes after an earlier report last July by Russia's E1 news outlet claimed those interested in utilising Durov's sperm would have to shell out some 35,000 rubles (£330), not including the cost of insemination.
Candidates would also reportedly have to meet a litany of requirements set out in an intensive questionnaire.
In an interview this week with France 's Le Point magazine, the tech mogul declared he plans to leave his £17 billion fortune to all of his offspring, adding that he saw no difference between the children he conceived naturally and those who came from sperm donations.
'They are all my children and will all have the same rights', Durov said. 'I don't want them to tear each other apart after my death.'
But none of them will get any cash for 30 years, he added.
'I want them to live like normal people, to build their lives on their own, to learn to trust themselves, to be able to create - not to be dependent on a bank account'.
The billionaire first revealed that he had fathered several children via sperm donation last year after a Russian woman based in Switzerland claimed that he was the father to her three children.
Irina Bolgar, 44, claimed in Russian Forbes that Durov had fathered her daughter and two sons, born in St Petersburg in 2013, 2016 and 2017, and that they carry his name.
She also admitted knowing about Durov's sperm donation.
In a post to his own Telegram profile last year, Durov addressed the claims he had fathered more than 100 children and said donating sperm was his 'civic duty'.
He also explained how he came to be a sperm donor in the first place.
'Fifteen years ago, a friend of mine approached me with a weird request. He said that he and his wife couldn't have kids due to a fertility issue and asked me to donate sperm at a clinic for them to have a baby...
'The boss of the clinic told me that 'high quality donor material' was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples,' he wrote.
'Fast forward to 2024, my past donating activity has helped over a hundred couples in 12 countries to have kids. Moreover, many years after I stopped being a donor, at least one IVF clinic still has my frozen sperm available for anonymous use by families who want to have kids,' he said, likely in reference to AltraVita.
He went on to explain that he planned to 'open source' his DNA, enabling his biological children worldwide to find and connect with one another.
Durov, whose messaging platform has over one billion monthly active users around the world, has been dubbed the Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk of Russia.
His fortune is estimated at up to £17billion and he remains the sole owner of Telegram despite widespread pressure to sell the business.
Born in Russia, Durov spent many of his childhood years in Italy before returning to his homeland when his father, a scholar in ancient Roman literature, landed a new job at St Petersburg University.
At the age of 21, he set up VKontakte (In Contact), a social media site that came to be known as the 'Facebook of Russia'.
When he refused to provide data on Ukrainian protestors to Russian security agencies in 2014, he was effectively forced to relinquish control of VKontakte.
This, he said, was the main factor that motivated him to leave Russia for good.
It was the Russian government's desire to censor and surveil, and the absence of any secure form of online communication network in Russia, that gave Durov the idea for Telegram.
The entrepreneur launched Telegram but struggled to settle in several cities, including Berlin, London and San Francisco, because of 'bureaucratic hurdles' put in his way.
He retains dual French and Emirati citizenship, but ultimately decided to headquarter Telegram in Dubai rather than Paris.
'I chose Dubai because I can manage a global company there much more efficiently,' he told Le Point.
'Unlike France, where bureaucracy is heavy, Dubai offers an agile environment. The procedures are automated there, supported by artificial intelligence, and almost everything is done online. Even justice is faster there.
'In France, a simple tax investigation can freeze a company's accounts for years, until it suffocates, even if it is later cleared. This kind of heaviness kills the entrepreneurial spirit,' he said.
Last year, the tech mogul was detained and charged by French authorities amid an investigation into crimes related to child pornography, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions associated with his app.
In March, he denied any wrongdoing and recounted his frustration to Le Point earlier this week.
'It's totally absurd. Just because criminals use our messaging service among many others doesn't make those who run it criminals... Nothing has ever been proven showing that I am, even for a second, guilty of anything,' he said.

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BREAKING: Judge orders release of Mahmoud Khalil

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The hashtags that were available to be posted to and viewed during an NBC News' review of the platform ranged from references to incest and teenagers to slightly more coded terms, like combinations of words with the name of the defunct video chat platform Omegle, which shut down in 2023 after a child sex exploitation lawsuit. Some hashtags contained jumbled letters and only contained posts advertising CSAM, indicating that they were created with the exclusive purpose of housing the advertisements. Some usernames of accounts posting the ads were simply a jumble of words associated with CSAM content on the platform, mixing names of social media platforms with other keywords. Many of the users linked directly to Telegram channels in their posts or their account bios and included explicit references to CSAM. Some posts linked to Discord channels or solicited direct messages to secure Discord links. Telegram and Discord have distinct positions in the internet's child exploitation ecosystem, offering semiprivate and private venues for people looking to sell or buy child exploitation material. NBC News previously reported on 35 cases in which adults were prosecuted on charges of kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault that allegedly involved communications on Discord. A Discord representative said, 'Discord has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material, and we take immediate action when we become aware of it, including removing content, banning users, and reporting to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).' The company said in response to NBC News' outreach that it removed multiple servers 'for policy violations unrelated to the sale of CSAM.' A representative for Telegram said 'CSAM is explicitly forbidden by Telegram's terms of service and such content is removed whenever discovered.' The representative pointed to the company's partnership with the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation, which maintains a database of known CSAM and provides tools to detect and remove it. While some of the X accounts posted publicly, others solicited and offered CSAM through X's Communities feature, where users create groups based on specific topics. NBC News observed groups with tens of thousands of members in which CSAM was solicited or was offered to be sold. In a group with over 70,000 members devoted to 'incest confessions,' multiple users posted multiple times linking to Telegram channels, explicitly referencing CSAM. 'I'm selling 6cp folder for only 90$,' one user wrote, linking to a Telegram account. CP is a common online abbreviation for 'child pornography.' CSAM has been a perpetual problem on the internet and social media, with many companies employing specialized teams and building automated systems to identify and remove abuse content and those spreading it. But Musk also instituted drastic cuts to the company's trust and safety teams and disbanded the company's Trust and Safety Council. In 2023, the company said that it was detecting more CSAM than in previous years and that it had increased staffing devoted to the issue despite larger trust and safety layoffs. Richardson, C3P's director of information technology, said that while X will sometimes remove accounts that are flagged to it for violating rules around CSAM, 'a new account pops up in two seconds, so there's not a lot of in-depth remediation to the problem. That's just sort of the bare minimum that we're looking at here.' He said an increasing reliance on artificial intelligence systems for moderation, if X is using them, could be in part to blame for such oversights. According to Richardson, AI systems are good at sorting through large datasets and flagging potential issues, but that, currently, systems will inevitably over- or under-moderate without human judgment at the end. 'There should be an actual incident response when someone is selling child sexual abuse material on your service, right? We've become completely desensitized to that. We're dealing with the sale of children being raped,' Richardson said. 'You can't automate your way out of this problem.' Ben Goggin Ben Goggin is the deputy tech editor for NBC News.

Reuters

10 hours ago

• Reuters

Putin says no need for OPEC+ to intervene in oil market due to Iran-Israel conflict

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