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The world’s most powerful internet porn company is owned by a shadowy businessman who barely exists online, a new report says.
Bernard Bergemar is the biggest owner of MindGeek, the Luxembourg-based conglomerate behind popular porn sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn and Brazzers, a Financial Times investigation found.
MindGeek had long kept Bergemar’s identity a closely held secret that only a handful of company executives and their advisers knew about, according to the paper. Before Thursday, his name only appeared in three Google search results related to his past role as an executive at RedTube, a porn platform MindGeek now owns.
While he’s not mentioned in the company’s corporate filings, the Financial Times revealed that Bergemar is MindGeek’s largest beneficiary thanks in part to a “complex network of subsidiaries” in which he owns a large chunk of the shares.
For instance, MindGeek has a $200 million debt to one of those subsidiaries that’s paid in installments as large as $1.8 million a month, adding up to an amount that outpaces the company’s declared profits in some years, according to the paper.
Bergemar declined to talk to the Financial Times, and The Post could not find contact information for him online. Pornhub did not respond to an email Thursday asking about his role in the company.
But MindGeek also reportedly has some better-known financial backers — including JPMorgan Chase, Cornell University and Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based investment management firm.
They were among 125 investors who gave the company $362 million in debt back in 2011, when it was known as Manwin and looking to expand, the FT reported.
The funding helped Manwin boss Fabian Thylmann grow his empire’s staff from 200 to 1,200 people and set up “dozens of corporate offshoots” in places such as Cyprus, Ireland and the Virgin Islands, the story says.
JPMorgan and Fortress declined to comment to the FT, and Cornell told the paper that its investment managers’ portfolios were confidential.
Thylmann jumped ship from Manwin after German prosecutors charged him with tax evasion in late 2012, according to the FT. He sold the business to Feras Antoon and David Tassillo, senior managers at the company who adopted the MindGeek name and still run it now, the paper reported.
The revelations about MindGeek’s ownership come amid scrutiny of Pornhub, the popular free site that critics say is infested with videos of rape and child sex abuse.
Pornhub removed most of its videos earlier this week in an attempt to clean up the platform while it develops a new user verification system. The move came after payment processors Visa and Mastercard cut ties with the site in the wake of a New York Times exposé about the exploitative content that appeared there.
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