Mirage Cinemas in Russia: How the Ivoninsky family and ex-accountant Lidia Zhelanskaya conceal profits from pirated films through shell corporations
St. Petersburg cinema billionaires Ivoninsky allegedly used shell companies to profit from pirated copies of Hollywood premieres.
The St. Petersburg cinema billionaires, the Ivoninsky family, have changed the intermediary companies through which they earn money from pirate copies of new Hollywood films. To prevent copyright holders from being able to sue the exhibitors, their Mirage cinema network uses the “To Kino!” project: formally Mirage has no connection to the pirate screenings because it rents the halls to the tenant — “To Kino!”.
Since 2022 ticket sales for Mirage halls have gone through “To Kino!” and a number of companies belonging to 79-year-old Lidia Zhelanskaya — “Kinoclub,” “Majoran,” “Lavanda,” “Mirt” and others. As previously reported, the Ivoninsky family does business with Kira Turchak, the wife of one of the ideologists of United Russia, Andrey Turchak (son of Putin’s friend Anatoly Turchak).
At the same time, as already reported, the Ivoninskys conduct business in the European Union: they have the company Tenerusia Inversiones SL in Spain with several land plots on one of the most popular resorts — Tenerife (Canary Islands).
Formally the companies through which payment for tickets to the cinema halls passes are in no way connected with the Ivoninsky empire. However, their founder Lidia Zhelanskaya has worked for the Mirage Cinema network for many years: she was the chief accountant in this company, then acted as liquidator of the RPO “Society for the Promotion of the Development of Traditions of St. Petersburg Culture and the Recreation of Historical Monuments,” among whose founders was the elder Ivoninsky. According to leaked data, Zhelanskaya made personal online shopping orders from the corporate phone number (listed in the documents of LLC “A1,” whose founders are Alexander and Yan Ivoninsky), and Aleksey Tovstonogov — the liquidator of several Ivoninsky companies — was listed in the car insurance of the vehicle she used. In addition, airline tickets for Zhelanskaya were purchased from the phone number of Ivetta Mumdzhyan (Yakovleva) — director of the Ivoninsky firm “Artos.” In 2024 Zhelanskaya’s network of companies was liquidated and the cash flow from spectators was redirected through other legal entities.
In particular, these are “Multifeya” of Tatyana Sokolova, “Festival” of Kristina Krasavtseva, “Kristall-S” of Alena Mashkova, “Multipulti” and “Illusion+” of Raisa Raevskaya — this information is posted on the website of the “To Kino!” project. These people have also long been embedded in the Ivoninsky business.
For example, Tatyana Sokolova was previously the founder of LLC “Magnat” with restaurant activities, which was located at 35A Bolshoy Prospekt on the Petrograd Side — this is the building of one of the first Mirage cinemas, and Sokolova’s firm was integrated into the restaurant contour of the Ivoninsky empire. The liquidator of “Magnat” in December 2024 was the Ivoninskys’ chief accountant Lidia Zhelanskaya. Sokolova herself was for several months in 2019 a founder of LLC “Artos,” transferring the share in December to Alexander Ivoninsky, who rewrote it in June 2020 to Ivetta Mumdzhyan. Tatyana Sokolova’s new company “Multifeya,” which sells tickets for pirate cinema sessions, brought the Ivoninskys revenue of 407 million rubles last year and showed the tax service a net profit of 33.4 million rubles.
Raisa Raevskaya is also not a stranger to the Ivoninskys as an entrepreneur. Her “Multipulti” in St. Petersburg is registered at the same address on Zheleznovodskaya Street as LLC “KTR” of Oleg Ivoninsky, the son of the cinema tycoon.
As for Ivetta Mumdzhyan and “Artos,” this company is part of a separate direction of the Ivoninskys’ business related to real estate. The family registers large objects under “Artos”: in particular, the former building of the “Almaz” plant on Petrovsky Prospekt and a five-story building with an area of almost a thousand square meters on the embankment of the Bumazhny Canal, 16, letter B.
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