Background
Bernd Bergmair was born in 1968 in Ansfelden, a small farming town in Upper Austria, the son of a farming family. He attended grammar school in Linz before transferring to HLBLA St. Florian, an agricultural school, then graduated from the University of Linz in 1992 with a thesis specifically on corporate acquisition financing strategies — M&A, LBOs, and MBOs (Wikipedia contributors, 2025). He subsequently received an MBA from Chicago Booth School of Business in 1994 (Globe and Mail Staff, 2021).
He joined Goldman Sachs in New York, where — according to Tortoise Media’s sourcing from a former colleague — he split one summer between Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, an arrangement described as “almost unheard of” (Mostrous et al., 2021). He rose to partner at Goldman Sachs and subsequently worked in Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and London (Wikipedia contributors, 2025).
In 2006, while still essentially unknown publicly, he became the owner of the porn website RedTube, operating through a Hong Kong-incorporated vehicle called Bright Imperial Ltd. (CR No. 1209892, incorporated 5 February 2008) (Hong Kong Companies Registry, 2008). In 2013, he sold RedTube to Manwin/MindGeek as part of the management buyout that simultaneously made him MindGeek’s majority owner — a circular structure that was characteristic of the opacity that would define his decade-long ownership (Financial Times Staff, 2020; Globe and Mail Staff, 2021).
The Globe and Mail noted that a confidential 2008 sales pitch for RedTube, entered as an exhibit in subsequent litigation, described the site as the “world’s leading player” in online pornography at the time, with Pornhub then a “distant competitor,” and characterized the sale as “a once in a lifetime opportunity” (Globe and Mail Staff, 2021). Whether Bergmair founded RedTube, purchased it from an earlier owner, or was brought in as an investor by others is unresolved in public record.
The Ownership Structure
Bergmair’s control of MindGeek was engineered to be essentially invisible. According to Luxembourg’s beneficial ownership registry (the Registre des bénéficiaires effectifs, RBE), Antoon and Tassillo together held 99.7% of the parent company MindGeek S.à.r.l. The remaining 0.3% belonged to a Luxembourg shell company called Acaju Investments S.A. — registered at 127 rue de Mühlenbach, L-2168 Luxembourg, company number B 56820 — whose beneficial ownership entry in the RBE was blocked from public view (Reporter.lu, 2021). This entity’s presence is confirmed directly in the Luxembourg Mémorial C official gazette from October 2013, which records Acaju Investments S.A. as a shareholder of MindGeek S.à.r.l. at the company’s formation (Luxembourg Business Register, 2013).
Luxembourg’s Reporter and Italy’s Corriere della Sera independently identified Acaju’s owner as Bergmair (Victor, 2023). The actual control mechanism ran through a subsidiary called RT Holding S.à.r.l., in which Bergmair held a documented 59.99% stake — confirmed in the Luxembourg RBE under the entry: “Bernd Bergmair, 59.99% des Anteile, Nationalität: Österreicher, geboren: Linz, Wohnort: Volksrepublik China.” He controlled RT Holding through three further shell companies, including Acaju Investments (Globe and Mail Staff, 2021; Reporter.lu, 2021).
The Volksrepublik China residence listing was false. Tortoise Media’s 2021 “Hunt for the Porn King” investigation traced Bergmair instead to a mansion on one of London’s most expensive streets, where the reporters doorstepped him; he did not speak (Mostrous et al., 2021).
Per MindGeek’s 2018 consolidated financial statements — the most recent available — Bergmair received 10 million per year from 2018 through 2024 thereafter. Separately, MindGeek paid high monthly licensing fees to additional Luxembourg holding companies majority-owned by Bergmair, amounting to either half the relevant revenue stream or a minimum of 200 million in debt, repaid in monthly installments of 1.8 million (Victor, 2021).
When Ethical Capital Partners acquired MindGeek in March 2023, corporate documents show that ECP Three acquired 590,161 class X shares from Acaju Investments S.A., and ECP Four acquired a further 100,017 class X shares from Bergmair-owned RK Holdings LLC, a Florida-based entity identified in court documents as a wholly owned MindGeek subsidiary (Victor, 2023).
Financial Scale
MindGeek’s revenues peaked at approximately 11.4 million in dividends to its owners in 2020 — nearly 30.5 million in dividends in 2020, of which Bergmair’s 59.99% stake entitled him to approximately $18.3 million (Victor, 2021).
In court filings in Fleites v. MindGeek, plaintiff’s attorney Michael Bowe alleged that Bergmair gave Antoon and Tassillo a combined 31% stake and $57 million in dividends as compensation for running day-to-day operations — positioning Bergmair as an absentee controlling investor extracting royalties while maintaining operational deniability (Stein & Brown Rudnick LLP, 2021; Victor, 2024).
The Concealment
Bergmair operated under the alias Bernard Bergemar in corporate documents. He had no public social media presence, gave no interviews, appeared in no corporate communications, and was unknown to most MindGeek employees. Prior to the Financial Times investigation in December 2020, a search of his name returned approximately three results — two court filings from the early 2010s and the FT piece itself. The only photograph of him in existence was a blurry image from a 2002 University of Chicago Booth alumni publication (Financial Times Staff, 2020; Globe and Mail Staff, 2021).
The Brown Rudnick federal racketeering complaint alleges he “took extreme steps to conceal not just his identity, but his very existence” because “he and his investors were fully aware of the legally dubious nature of the business they owned and ran” (Bowe & Brown Rudnick LLP, 2022; Institutional Investor, 2021).
One former MindGeek employee who had met Bergmair in person told the Globe and Mail that they knew only his first name. On the occasions he visited the Montreal office, CEO Antoon reportedly described him to staff as “only a small shareholder.” Bergmair, per the Globe’s account, “dressed in an expensive suit, never said much and appeared to be the very definition of a silent partner” (Globe and Mail Staff, 2021).
The Financing Chain and “Unknown Investors”
The Brown Rudnick complaint draws a financing lineage that is important and only partially resolved. In 2009 the U.S. Secret Service seized $6.4 million from the company’s accounts and those of its then-nominal owners as a result of a money laundering investigation — this is stated in the complaint filed in U.S. federal court, though no independent confirmation of the underlying case file has been published (Bowe & Brown Rudnick LLP, 2022; Institutional Investor, 2021).
Following this, the company was sold to Fabian Thylmann, described in the complaint as “funded by unknown investors from Eastern Europe.” The acquisition was financed with $362 million in secured debt — bearing an interest rate of approximately 24% — arranged through Colbeck Capital, a boutique investment bank run by two former Goldman Sachs bankers. Bergmair subsequently acquired his majority stake through a restructuring that retired the Colbeck debt. The complaint notes the structural parallel: “like the principals of Colbeck Capital before him, Bergmair was a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who had left to provide niche financing for legally dubious ventures Goldman Sachs and similar Wall Street firms would not fund” (Bowe & Brown Rudnick LLP, 2022; Institutional Investor, 2021).
The identity of the Eastern European investors who backed Thylmann has never been established in public record. Thylmann himself, in a 2016 interview, acknowledged that his investors had required strict non-disclosure agreements but offered no further characterization of their identities or origins (Victor, 2021b).
The “Bergmair Does” — Hidden Co-Investors Named in Litigation
The most significant primary source detail in the Fleites v. MindGeek lawsuit is structural: alongside Bergmair as a named defendant, the original complaint names “Bergmair Does 1 through 10” — a legal placeholder for up to ten additional unidentified individuals whom plaintiffs’ counsel believes to be behind Bergmair as co-owners, co-financiers, or co-controllers of the enterprise. This is structurally parallel to “Colbeck Capital Does 1 through 10,” also named in the same complaint, suggesting plaintiffs’ attorneys believe both Colbeck and Bergmair operated with unidentified principals whose identities remain shielded by the ownership structure (Bowe & Brown Rudnick LLP, 2022; Stein & Brown Rudnick LLP, 2021).
The “Bergmair Does” formulation is a primary source confirmation — in active federal litigation — that the question of who stands behind Bergmair is not merely journalistic inference but a live legal question with sworn pleadings attached.
Bergmair Blocks the Sale — Repeatedly
Between June and October 2021, at least three separate investor groups attempted to acquire MindGeek. Two bids exceeded 475–525 million — internally pitched as “2.8 times MindGeek’s 2020 annual EBITDA” (Victor, 2021b). A second bid from a group led by Michael Serruya, co-founder of the Yogen Früz frozen yogurt chain, was also rejected (Silcoff, 2021).
In each case, per Globe and Mail reporting, Antoon and Tassillo were willing to entertain the bids, but Bergmair blocked them. Sources told the Globe that Bergmair was “reluctant to give up all of his ownership in the company” and that the three owners “rarely achieved consensus over a sale” (Silcoff, 2021).
By June 2022, the internal conflict had become acute. Bergmair had separately sought to raise funds to buy out Antoon and Tassillo rather than sell — an effort that stalled (Financial Times, 2022). On June 21, 2022, Antoon and Tassillo resigned as CEO and COO simultaneously, alongside the layoff of approximately 200 employees. Anti-trafficking campaigner Laila Mickelwait reported, via an insider source, that Bergmair had told the executives to “resign or be fired.” Sources told the Globe it had become “a messy fight” and that Bergmair was “unhappy with the management team leading MindGeek into trouble” (Financial Times, 2022). The FT noted that Antoon’s $16 million Montreal mansion had been destroyed by fire in April 2021; a police investigation had not identified the cause at time of reporting (Financial Times, 2022).
When MindGeek was ultimately sold to Ethical Capital Partners in March 2023 for 125 million less than the 2021 Project Narsil offer (Silcoff & Birnbaum, 2023; Victor, 2024). Court filings in Fleites v. MindGeek further allege that ECP was likely insolvent at closing and structured the acquisition as installment payments to Bergmair, Antoon, and Tassillo rather than a lump sum, meaning the “sale” functioned more as a promissory arrangement than a conventional acquisition (Victor, 2024). ECP has denied wrongdoing.
A further complication documented by The Logic: several ECP principals — including criminal defence lawyer Fady Mansour, communications consultant Sarah Bain, and former RCMP superintendent Derek Ogden — were also involved in the earlier Project Narsil / Bruinen attempt to acquire MindGeek in 2021 (Silcoff & Birnbaum, 2023). The sale was announced the day after Netflix released the documentary Money Shot: The Pornhub Story.
The Lukoil Bid
In December 2024, Reuters confirmed — via two sources familiar with the matter — that Bergmair had approached U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) seeking clearance to acquire Lukoil International GmbH’s international assets: European refineries, oilfield stakes in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, and Mexico, and hundreds of retail fuel stations, with a combined estimated value of $22 billion per 2024 filings (Zhdannikov et al., 2024). Through a lawyer, Bergmair confirmed interest but declined to specify which assets, whether he had approached Lukoil directly, or whether he was acting as part of a consortium — the last point left deliberately unanswered (Zhdannikov et al., 2024).
The U.S. Treasury declined to comment. Bergmair’s bid ultimately did not succeed: Carlyle Group agreed to acquire the portfolio (excluding Kazakhstan assets) on January 29, 2025, with OFAC and Kremlin approval still pending at that date. Gunvor Group’s prior competing bid had been rejected by Treasury on Kremlin-connection grounds (Reuters, 2025).
What Remains Unresolved
The Eastern European investor identity behind Thylmann’s acquisition is the most significant open evidentiary gap. The Brown Rudnick complaint characterizes them as “unknown investors from Eastern Europe” who funded the $362 million Colbeck-arranged debt; no journalist has established their identities (Bowe & Brown Rudnick LLP, 2022; Institutional Investor, 2021).
The “Bergmair Does 1–10” — the unnamed co-investors or co-controllers behind Bergmair named in Fleites v. MindGeek — remain unidentified. Their existence is asserted in sworn court filings, but their identities are shielded by the ownership structure (Stein & Brown Rudnick LLP, 2021).
The 2009 Secret Service seizure is stated in a U.S. federal court complaint but has not been independently confirmed through case records (Bowe & Brown Rudnick LLP, 2022).
The RedTube origins — specifically how Bergmair came to control Bright Imperial Ltd. and RedTube in 2006, and from whom or through whom — are unestablished in public record (Globe and Mail Staff, 2021; Hong Kong Companies Registry, 2008).
No established direct link to Russian organized crime or intelligence has been documented. The Lukoil interest and the Eastern European financing background are structural overlaps. They are noted here as evidentiary gaps warranting further investigation rather than as established connections.