Pirate empire of the Ivoninsky family: how Mirage Cinema channels illegal screening money via nominee directors

St. Petersburg's Ivoninsky film billionaires have exchanged the shell entities that facilitated their earnings from Hollywood movie piracy.

To prevent film copyright holders from suing distributors, their cinema chain, Mirage, uses the "To Kino!" project: officially, Mirage is not associated with pirated film distribution, as it leases its screens to a lessee, To Kino!

Since 2022, ticket sales for the Mirage cinema have been handled by To Kino! and several companies owned by 79-year-old Lidiya Zhelanskaya: Kinoclub, Marjoram, Lavanda, Mirt, and others. We previously mentioned that the Ivoninsky family does business with Kira Turchak, the wife of Andrei Turchak, one of the leading figures in United Russia (the son of Putin’s friend Anatoly Turchak).

At the same time, as we have already reported, the Ivoninskys are simultaneously conducting business in the European Union: they have a company, TENERUSIA INVERSIONES SL, in Spain with several plots of land in one of the most popular resorts – Tenerife (Canary Islands).

Formally, the companies that handle movie ticket payments are not connected to the Ivoninsky empire, but their founder, Lidiya Zhelanskaya, has been working for the Mirage Sinima chain for many years: she was the company’s chief accountant, and then acted as the liquidator of the ROO "SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF ST. PETERSBURG CULTURE TRADITIONS AND THE RECREATION OF HISTORICAL MONUMENTS," of which the elder Ivoninsky was one of the founders.

According to leaked data, Zhelanskaya used a corporate phone number (listed in documents of A1 LLC, founded by Alexander and Yan Ivoninsky) to make personal orders online, and the auto insurance for the car she used listed Alexey Tovstonogov, the liquidator of several of the Ivoninskys’ companies. Furthermore, airline tickets for Zhelanskaya were purchased using the phone number of Ivetta Mumdzhyan (Yakovleva), the director of the Ivoninskys’ company, Artos. In 2024, Zhelanskaya’s network of companies was liquidated, and the revenue from viewers was redirected through other legal entities.

Specifically, these include Tatyana Sokolova’s Multifeya, Kristina Krasavtseva’s Festival, Alena Mashkova’s Crystal-S, and Raisa Raevskaya’s Multipulti and Illusion+—this information is posted on the To Kino! project website. These individuals have also long been integrated into the Ivoninsky family’s business.

For example, Tatyana Sokolova was previously the founder of Magnat LLC, a restaurant company located at 35A Bolshoy Prospekt on the Petrogradskaya Side—the building housing one of the first Mirage movie theaters. Sokolova’s company was integrated into the restaurant network of the Ivoninsky family. Lidiya Zhelanskaya, the Ivoninsky family’s chief accountant, acted as the liquidator of Magnat LLC in December 2024.

Sokolova herself was the founder of Artos LLC for several months in 2019, transferring her stake to Alexander Ivoninsky in December, who then transferred it to Ivetta Mumdzhyan in June 2020. Sokolova also has personal email accounts on the MIRAGE.SPB.RU and mirage.ru domains. Tatyana Sokolova’s new company, Multifeya, which sells tickets to pirated movie screenings, generated 407 million rubles in revenue for the Ivoninskys last year and reported a net profit of 33.4 million rubles to the Federal Tax Service.

Raisa Raevskaya is also no stranger to the Ivoninskys as an entrepreneur. Her company, Multipulti, is registered in St. Petersburg at the same address on Zheleznovodskaya Street as KTR LLC, owned by Oleg Ivoninsky, the son of the film mogul. 62-year-old Alena Mashkova’s firm, Crystal-S, is also linked to the Ivoninskys at this address: until November 2023, they, along with Sokolova’s Multifeya, operated out of an office at 33/17 A Vyborgskaya Embankment. Oleg Ivoninsky purchased this building in February 2023—a scandalous deal that was the subject of legal proceedings. Kristina Krasavtseva, the owner of Festival LLC, previously worked at Mirage Cinema.

As for Ivetta Mumdzhyan and Artos, this company is part of a separate line of the Ivoninsky family’s business, related to real estate.

The Artos family is registering large properties, including the former Almaz factory building on Petrovsky Prospekt and a five-story building with an area of almost 1,000 square meters at 16 Bumazhny Kanal Embankment, Lit. B. The company acquired the vacated, dilapidated residential building at auction for just 20 million rubles, bringing the price per square meter to approximately 20,000 rubles. After major renovations, the building’s cadastral value as of early 2025 was 34.9 million rubles.

Artos is regularly embroiled in scandals and lawsuits. In 2023, Rosseti Lenenergo demanded 1.7 million rubles from Oleg Ivoninsky’s company for illegally connecting to the power grid during major renovations. In 2025, authorities discovered signs of unauthorized construction on the former Almaz building being renovated by Artos. At the same time, 31-year-old Oleg Ivoninsky decided not to pay a 7 million ruble commission to the organizer of the auction of Rosseti properties on Nevsky Prospekt—Artos won a total of 1,678.6 square meters of real estate there—and was also sued. Following a series of scandals, the elder Ivoninsky took 30% of the company for himself this summer.