The fund that just bought Pornhub owner MindGeek won't say who's running the company due to 'unfortunate stigma,' report says

Pornhub owner MindGeek has been bought by Ethical Capital Partners.

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• The private equity firm that acquired Pornhub's parent company won't reveal who's running MindGeek.
• Ethical Capital Partners told the Financial Times it won't yet identify MindGeek's executives.
• The new owner says it's keeping their names under wraps because of "stigma" about the porn industry.

The new owner of Pornhub's parent company says it won't yet reveal the names of the executives running Mindgeek because there's "unfortunate stigma" associated with the porn industry. 

Ethical Capital Partners, a Canadian private equity firm set up last year, announced its acquisition of MindGeek Thursday for an undisclosed sum. It also owns sites including YouPorn, Redtube and Brazzers as well as Pornhub, one of the world's most-visited websites.

ECP told the Financial Times it wanted to be transparent as the company's new owners. 

Solomon Friedman, an ECP partner, said: "I want to engage regularly with stakeholders, including the media."

However, he added that "at this point we are not identifying the current executives, as there is an unfortunate stigma" associated with the porn industry. 

Friedman is a criminal defense lawyer and law professor at ECP, which was founded by Rocco Meliambro, the creator of one of Canada's biggest cannabis retailers.

The fund laid out its plans for MindGeek in a statement. It said it will adopt new online safety measures to increase trust and safety and invest to "help fight illegal online content."

MindGeek was previously controlled by a former banker named Bernd Bergmair, while David Tassillo and Syrian-Canadian programmer Feras Antoon also held stakes. 

Antoon and Tassillo joined Pornhub in 2008 and spent more than a decade running the company before they resigned as CEO and COO of MindGeek in June 2022, but remained shareholders.

The acquisition was announced the day after Netflix released a documentary titled "Money Shot: The Pornhub Story". It examines the dark side of the platform as well as the censorship of sex workers. 

It details how a New York Times op-ed in December 2020 that accused Pornhub of hosting child porn sparked public outrage. About six months later 34 women sued the company and accused it of profiting from trafficked videos of them.

The allegations spurred an investigation by Visa and Mastercard, which temporarily cut off Pornhub from its payment services in the same month.

Antoon and Tassillo were summoned to give evidence to a Canadian parliamentary committee in February 2021 as MindGeek is largely run from Montreal.

CTV News reported that Tassillo told the hearing: "I truly believe, in my heart of hearts, that we are the safest adult platform in the world right now."

ECP didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider. 

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