Pavel Durov, who is the founder of VKontakte (VK), one of the world's largest social networking sites, has left Russia for good, announcing that he and his team are looking for a country in Europe to stay and begin new projects.
“As you probably know, I am out of Russia. Me and my team of 12
engineers have a temporary HQ in Central Europe, and we are now looking
for a permanent base to work from. We are choosing a new home, a country
that will allow us to develop our projects with privacy and freedom of
speech in mind,” Durov wrote on his Facebook page Thursday.
“Our team includes six ACM champions and six winners of other
programming contests. These guys made it possible for Telegram Messenger
to gather 40 million registered users worldwide just within 8 months
after its launch. Several members of this team, including my brother,
were crucial in making VKontakte what it is today – the only social
network that defeated Facebook in an open local market. We are now going
to build our next project, a mobile social network,” he said.
VK’s press service, citing executive director Dmitry Sergeyev, said
on Monday that Durov had been dismissed because he did not correctly
retract the statement of his resignation a month ago. Durov announced on
April 1 that he was leaving VK, but two day later he said that he had
changed his mind and would remain CEO of the company.
Durov said he found out about the dismissal from the press, as the
“shareholders did not have enough courage to do this directly.” He later
said: “I’m out of Russia and have no plans to go back,” Durov told
online publication TechCrunch. “Unfortunately, the country is
incompatible with Internet business at the moment.”
Durov said the fact that the VK shareholders accepted his resignation
he tendered a month before was “the final nail in the coffin” of both
the social network and his management of the company.
VK’s principal shareholder is Russian Internet company Mail.ru Group,
which owns 52% of the social network, including a 12% stake previously
owned by Durov. Mail.ru is controlled by billionaire Alisher Usmanov.
Ilya Scherbovich’s United Capital Partners (UCP) owns 48% of VK.
