09 August 2026 , 20:53
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As investigative journalists have found out, the St. Petersburg cinema magnates and film pirates the Ivoninskys (who own the Mirage cinema chain) have built a true empire of companies registered to proxy figures. As previously reported, the main income of Mirage and the Ivoninskys comes from screening pirated copies of new Hollywood releases.
To prevent copyright holders from filing lawsuits, Mirage uses a project called "To Kino!", to which it "leases" its halls, while tickets are sold through a number of small shell companies registered to Mirage employees. Under government contracts, the cinemas also screen patriotic war films. The Ivoninskys invest the proceeds in purchasing land plots and a construction business in Spain, as well as in the restaurant and property management businesses, where they collaborate with the Military Insurance Company.
The St. Petersburg network of the Ivoninskys’ companies includes a massive number of legal entities that hold their assets. Some companies are engaged in the restaurant business, others own real estate and carry out construction work, and several companies connected to their business manage residential complexes. At the same time, formally, the firms are registered to third parties and appear to have no connection to the Ivoninskys. As a rule, such schemes help save on taxes and siphon off funds by transferring them between affiliated legal entities.
For instance, several of the Ivoninskys’ companies are registered at 12 Furshtatskaya Street, Litera A, premises 1-N. These are LLC Karamel and LLC Kapuchino, which held alcohol trading licenses and are currently being liquidated. They were registered under Maksim Ilyin and Maksim Lagutkin. The liquidator for both companies is the Ivoninskys’ accountant, Lidiya Zhelanskaya. Meanwhile, according to data leaks, Maksim Ilyin previously acted as a guarantor for a bank loan taken out by 31-year-old Nikolay Osipov.
Osipov is a long-time employee of the Ivoninskys; in phone directories, he is saved as "Nikolay Mirage," and he has a personalized email address on the mirage.ru domain. Several other companies were registered in Osipov’s name, including a stake in AVTOZNAKPITER, which manufactures license plates, and the management company GKS VYBORGA, which holds a license to manage apartment buildings. He was also previously the founder of another management company, LLC LENOBLINZHINIRING (in 2025, the company was re-registered to Aleksey Lezhnev). This company, among other things, managed the "Lastochka" residential complex at 7 Petrovsky Boulevard in Murino, Vsevolozhsky District of the Leningrad Region. One of the counterparties of Lenoblinzhiniring is the Military Insurance Company.
According to leaks, Osipov also used the phone number of LLC Nostalzhi, owned by Ivetta Mumdzhyan. As previously reported, she is also an employee of the Ivoninsky empire, and her company shares an address with the "Mirage on Bolshoy" cinema. The stated core activity of Nostalzhi is the wholesale of food products, beverages, and tobacco, but in reality, the company is involved in more than that. In 2023, it attempted to purchase a BUSH 505 SL EDITION ONE light aircraft from the Moscow region-based aircraft manufacturer RSK "AGAN" for 16.8 million rubles. However, the delivery from the domestic manufacturer never happened, and the deposit had to be recovered through the court.
The Ivoninskys are known as co-owners of the KIDO sushi bar chain. The family of film pirates runs this business together with Kira Turchak, the wife of Andrey Turchak, one of the ideologues of "United Russia" (and son of Putin’s friend Anatoly Turchak). The money earned from film piracy and their joint ventures with the Turchaks is invested by the Ivoninskys in Spain.
The Ivoninsky family also owns foreign assets, notably the Spanish company TENERUSIA INVERSIONES SL. In 2025, the Ivoninskys’ firm, along with Natalya Tolstokorova’s company NATALY HOUSE INVERSIONES CANARIAS SL and a group of Spanish businessmen, entered the La Tejita Luxury Resort S.L. project. This company also owned land plots for residential construction in Tenerife.
World Affairs Correspondent