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World’s Most Successful Porn Site Is Owned By A Shadowy Businessman

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.

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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 initially told the paper that its investment managers’ portfolios were confidential.

But in a statement to The Post after this story was published, Cornell spokesman John Carberry said it cut ties with the fund manager that got the school involved in the MindGeek deal after looking into the matter.

“Our examination swiftly discovered that in 2016 this fund manager, one of our approximately 350 fund accounts, had invested in what was described by the manager as ‘online media distribution,’” Carberry said. “That investment, without our knowledge, related to a firm associated with exploitive online pornography.”

“Although that same review determined that this investment had been removed from our portfolio in May 2018, within days of learning of this past relationship and confirming this past unacceptable investment decision, Cornell immediately moved to sever its relationship with this manager and terminate this account.”

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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.

Source: Nypost

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