Pavel Durov leaves the post of general director VKontakte

The founder of the largest Russian social network VKontakte, Pavel Durov, announced the departure from the post of its general director.

“Following my brother, who left the post of technical director in the middle of last year, I take off my duties of general director VKontakte,” Pavel Durov said today, April 1, on his page on the social network.

He clarified that he would “continue to participate in the life of VKontakte on the rights of the founder, but formal posts in the new conditions are not interesting to me.”

By these new conditions, he understands “events followed by changing the joint -stock staff of VKontakte in April 2013,” as a result of which “the freedom of action of the general director in the management of the company has significantly reduced”.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to defend the principles that were once laid for the basis of our social network,” writes the founder of VKontakte.

On April 17, 2013 , the United Capital Partners Investment Fund (UCP) , which is managed by Ilya Shcherbovich, bought 48% of the shares from VKontakte shareholders Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Levieva. On January 24, 2014, it became known that Pavel Durov sold his share in the company of MegaFon CEO Ivan Tavrin.

PS VKontakte shareholders will discuss the procedure for choosing a new general director at the nearest council of directors this week, the UCP Foundation, which owns a 48% of the social network shares.

“The corresponding item is included in the agenda,” Nafis Naskova, spokesman for UCP , told Interfax .

According to her, Pavel Durov filed an application for CEO resignation a few days ago. “We did not consider it right to publicly talk about this until the moment when Pavel himself publishes this news. Today he announced this publicly. If this is not a joke on April 1, then according to the law, Durov should submit an application 1 month before the planned care, ”said Naskova.