The billionaire Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov says he will divide his wealth among all his children – who are believed to be more than 100. The technology tycoon is estimated to have a personal fortune of some $13.9bn (£10.3bn).
He is the founder of the Telegram messaging app, which the company claims has more than 950 million active users. The 40-year-old has fathered six offspring with three partners but has more than 100 other children after donating sperm to a fertility clinic.
“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 told French political magazine Le Point.
However, the billionaire’s children will not be able to claim their inheritance for 30 years.
“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,” he said.
Durov was born in Russia but spent much of his childhood in Italy and has multiple nationalities.
He is a citizen of France, Russia, the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, and the United Arab Emirates.
The entrepreneur and his brother Nikolai launched the Telegram app in 2013, which has become a roaring success.
According to Telegram, Pavel supports the app “financially and ideologically while Nikolai’s input is technological.”
He is also the founder of Russia’s equivalent to Facebook – VKontakte – which is the country’s largest social network.
Following mass anti-Putin demonstrations at the end of 2011, the company came under huge pressure amid a government crackdown on dissent.
He claimed the Kremlin had demanded VKontakte take down the online communities of Russian opposition activists.
It later asked the platform to hand over the personal data of users who took part in the 2013 uprising in Ukraine, which eventually ousted a pro-Kremlin president.
After coming under Kremlin pressure, Pavel sold his stake in VKontakte in 2014 and fled from Russia into a self-imposed exile.