A French telegram founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, has left his estimated $17 billion fortune to his 106 biological children, but said they would not access it until 2055.
Forty-year-old Durov told French magazine Le Point on Thursday, that the delay was to ensure his children develop independence before accessing the inheritance.
He said, ”I wrote my will very recently… I decided that my children would not have access to my fortune until a period of thirty 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.
“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.”
Durov said six of the children were conceived naturally with three different women, while the rest were born via sperm donation across a dozen countries in the past 15 years.
”Six of whom I am the official father, whom I had with three different partners. The others come from my anonymous donation. The clinic, where I started donating sperm fifteen years ago to help a friend, told me that more than 100 babies had been conceived this way in 12 countries, ” he said.
With current net worth, each child could receive between $131 million and $161 million, according to estimates by Bloomberg and Forbes.
The disclosure comes as Durov faces legal challenges in France.
He was detained in August 2024 at Bourget Airport near Paris while arriving from Azerbaijan on a private jet.
