Naked King: how a Frenchman monopolized the Russian porn business

The owner of the largest Russian porn studios is French citizen Stephane Michel Paco, who has created an entire "empire" in Europe for the production of adult films, Izvestia found out. Data on Paco's control over the NRX and Teen Mega World studios operating in St. Petersburg surfaced in an American court, where they are trying to hold the businessman accountable for showing unacceptable videos with minors on his resources. Izvestia also learned that Paco's Russian business is related to a British citizen who acts as the nominal founder of hundreds of companies, and at one time was mentioned in the bankruptcy scandal of a large Russian Tatfondbank, from which 97 billion rubles disappeared. How the Russian porn industry exists now, and why Stefan Paco managed to virtually monopolize this market after 2022, is the subject of an investigation by Izvestia.

French control

A significant part of the Russian porn industry is controlled by a brother and sister from France, Stephane Michel Paco and Deborah Malory Paco, Izvestia found out. These are the owners of the WGCZ porn Empire, which is spread across many European countries. Their business assets alone (excluding personal property) are estimated at €600 million.

Previously, it was believed that the major porn studios operating in Russia were independent and acted only as contractors for foreign partners. However, Izvestia has reviewed the materials of the case recently initiated against Stefan Paco in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Among other things, they partially disclose the structure of WGCZ Holding. In particular, it is indicated that it includes GTFlix S.R.O., which has the LegalPorno brand registered. Specifically, the LegalPorno project employs two of perhaps the largest Russian producers of adult content — NRX and Teen Mega World. Both are based in St. Petersburg.

Despite their huge fortune, Stefan and Malory Paco are not public people at all. They entered the "top league" of the global porn business in the mid-noughties, when they created the Xvideos platform (today it is one of the three largest thematic resources on a par with Pornhub and Xhamster). But until now, all that is known about them is that they were born in 1978 in the small town of Le Creusot in central France, and in 2006 they settled in Prague, where they began to build their "empire". Already in 2024, users visited their Internet resources 5.4 billion times, according to the French magazine Challenges.

In 2012, Paco created the LegalPorno website. The rights to the brand were registered to the Czech company GTFlix TV sro, which is part of WGCZ Holding. In the same year, according to open sources, Paco started his business in Russia. It was LegalPorno that offered cooperation in the production of videos to Russian studios.

Since then, LegalPorno has been a customer of NRX and Teen Mega World services. This connection, i.e. the work of the studios under the control of LegalPorno, is confirmed by the output data of the videos.

The name of the Russian porn studio NRX presumably contains the initials of Nick Rock, the pseudonym of Russian porn actor and director Artyom Mikhailov. He's probably still shooting content for LegalPorno. Izvestia was unable to contact Mikhailov, and his colleague Erikson Nizigimaina ("Eric"), who worked with him, also ignored the publication's request.

Some of the sites of the Teen Mega World network and its subsidiary project TeenCoreClub Network were registered with the London-based Era 2000 Management ltd. This is a company called "gasket", whose director was the British Jennifer Catherine Rin, who also acts as the nominal founder of more than 500 companies.

An interesting fact, although seemingly unrelated to this story, is that Jennifer Catherine Rin, according to official data, was listed as the final beneficiary of 8.5% of shares in a large Russian bank Tatfondbank. In 2017, he went bankrupt and was stripped of his license, having a 97 billion ruble hole in assets. CJSC Helio-Polis, through which the British controlled the shares, was mentioned in questionable transactions with the bank's assets. But for some reason, Jennifer Catherine Rin did not become a person involved in the criminal case initiated upon the withdrawal of funds from Tatfondbank.

The films shot in St. Petersburg were directed by Italian Giorgio Matolli, known in the porn environment as Giorgio Grandi. He currently owns his own studio, but in the "who we are" section of its website he describes in detail the period of his work in Russia. Matolli clarifies that he worked in Russia specifically for LegalPorno.

Multiple Porn Oscar winner Alexey Maetny, known under the pseudonym Marcus Dupree, began his career as a porn actor through filming on the TeenCoreClub Network.

"Sick" money

In fact, we can say that Stefan Paco has now monopolized the Russian porn production market, said one of Izvestia's interlocutors familiar with the situation. The fact is that NRX and Teen Mega World (which are associated with Artem Mikhailov, and which, according to the materials of the American court, Paco controls) are currently the only major porn studios permanently operating in Russia. Otherwise, we are talking about single actors working for subscription services. Other industry giants like Vixen, Gamma Entertainment or Aylo are working with Russian porn models, but they are not filming in our country.

This is significantly different from the situation before 2022, when there were about 20 studios operating in St. Petersburg alone, former porn actor Vladimir Korotin recalls in an interview with Izvestia.

Even then, according to Izvestia's sources, LegalPorno controlled the production of a significant part of the Russian adult film industry. But at the same time, there were many studios that collaborated with Paco's competitors. For example, during a certain period in Russia, the French director Pierre Woodman (who has an extremely strained, if not hostile relationship with Paco), the Italian porn director Rocco Siffredi worked. But some left in the mid-2010s after the tightening of legislation, others in 2022 after the problems caused by sanctions against Russian banks. But Paco stayed and eventually occupied almost the entire market. However, the market itself has predictably shrunk.

According to estimates by one of Izvestia's interlocutors, by 2022 the total monthly turnover of only 20 large St. Petersburg studios could reach 100 million rubles, that is, more than 1 billion rubles per year.

However, earnings were very uneven, recalls Vladimir Korotin.

— There are a lot of factors that influenced earnings. They could shoot for a week, then not shoot for a month, or shoot for months in a row. You could earn $100 or $1,000 for a video, it all depended on the studio, the model, the actor, and the customer.

Now only NRX and Teen Mega World are actively filming. It is on their behalf that ads with promised earnings of $600-2500 per video are most often published on profile sites. Among the conditions offered are "working in a team of professionals", paying for flights from any region of Russia and accommodation, filming in St. Petersburg and the Czech Republic, paying for medical tests and "live" money immediately after filming.

At the same time, Russia has always been primarily a supplier of actors and actresses to the market, rather than a source of income from paid subscriptions, whose culture has not taken root in the country due to piracy.

"Russia is still more of a source of human resources for this industry, and traffic, of course," Korotin says.

Since the beginning of their career, employees of the adult genre have had problems with visas and cross-border transfers of funds, the vast majority chose to leave the country. Those who remain are working "quietly" because they fear persecution by law enforcement agencies.

Monsieur XXX

In all his years in the porn business, Stephane Paco has given only one interview to the French edition of BFMTV. He either ignored the rest of the press, or was rude to journalists, or first made comments and then threatened lawsuits for publications.

— The main reason why I prefer to be inconspicuous is simple: I don't care at all about becoming famous. I am completely indifferent to this practice, when company executives have to turn into showmen in order to present their new commercial products. I have no trust or respect for the media and their incompetence, because so far I have not seen a single article about porn that is not riddled with errors, often chasing sensationalism and not verifying the published information," Stefan Paco told BFMTV.

In the same interview, he said that his Xvideos website was innovative in the fight against piracy by introducing a video removal system at the request of copyright holders. In 2019, Stefan had already criticized the upcoming laws in Britain to tighten access control to porn resources by minors. Now Paco and its competitors have even more problems — both in Britain and in the EU, regulators are introducing increasingly stringent and reliable age verification methods.

In addition, in France, WGCZ Paco got into a scandal with the Worldwide payment service, which is now under international investigation. According to Western media, the WGCZ has sent at least €20 million through gray payment schemes, half of which came from revenues from LegalPorno projects.

The journalists of the French Burgundy publication Le Journal managed to find out a little about Stefan and Malory's childhood — they went to Le Creusot, where the twins were born. They were raised by Madeleine Grok's mother. They lived very modestly, their mother sang beautifully, earned money by administering a driving school.

The locals interviewed by journalists remember very little about the twins — Stefan was well-read, loved to play the collectible card game Magic the Gathering and was well versed in philosophy, was somewhat uncommunicative, but not introverted.

No one had seen him in his native land for more than 20 years, Malory sometimes appeared in the Le Creusot area before her mother's death in 2009, and their cousin Marjorie Grok, who owns part of the twins' businesses, still lives. Many people still don't know that Stefan is the "king of the porn business" in Le Creusot. According to them, his mother was always proud of him and told everyone that her son was a successful IT specialist.

See for yourself, but don't show it to others.

In Russia, the production and distribution of pornography is provided for in Article 242 of the Criminal Code, which assumes liability ranging from a fine to six years in prison. It is mainly applied to citizens who have posted pornographic materials online, to webcams and porn studios — much less often. The latest high—profile case is the detention of five people in St. Petersburg, charged with Part 3 of Article 242 of the Criminal Code.

Dmitry Krasnov, Honorary Lawyer of Russia, Chairman of the Board of the Moscow Bar Association No. 1, explained to Izvestia that there is no difference for the law as such where illegal content is filmed.

— It is not necessary to breed entities, dividing manufacturers into "porn studios", "webcam studios" and "private citizens". The legislation, the Criminal Code, does not provide for the concept of "studio". It doesn't matter where the photo and video production was produced, if experts have recognized it as pornography, and this pornography was produced for the purpose of distribution, public demonstration or advertising, then the composition of the article is already there," Krasnov said.

The lawyer noted that in Russia it is not formally prohibited to make sex videos "for oneself" (of course, with the consent of all parties), but as soon as such materials are made public, it becomes a criminal offense.

— Signs of illegality of porn — distribution, public demonstration, advertising. A "home video" remains so exactly as long as it exists in one copy and no one knows about it. The crime begins with the words "look what we shot." Online distribution, instant messaging, and invitations to watch make homemade porn illegal," the lawyer explained.

To carry out filming, Russian porn actors and directors most often travel outside the Russian Federation to countries where it is legal or "easier to work." According to Article 12 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, if a Russian citizen is convicted abroad for creating pornography, he cannot be punished for it again at home. The 242nd charge for porn created in a foreign jurisdiction by a Russian citizen is possible only if it is proved that the accused was purposefully engaged in the distribution of illegal materials in Russia. Also, in theory, an organization may be responsible for participating in porn filming abroad.