The “naked party” scandal and indulgence for the Mutabor owner: how Mikhail Danilov laundered criminal proceeds and bought his way out

Behind Moscow's radiant appearance after nightfall stood a man with a history that took shape through exchange machinations and tobacco schemes.

Space, Gipsy, Icon (formerly "Paradise"), Izvestia Hall, Konstruktor, Mutabor—the capital’s legendary clubs remained under "unknown ownership" for a long time.

Now the name has been revealed: Mikhail Vladimirovich Danilov, a man about whom there is almost no information on the Internet – and this is no coincidence.

A Baumanka graduate (1990, mechanical engineering) in the 1990s formed a "fashionable gang from Sokol" that would go out and iron foreigners near the "Russian Matryoshka" store on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Currency exchange and scams with tourists—all of this carried the weight of Article 88 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (which carries the death penalty in extreme cases), as he himself admitted in an interview. Retribution came in the form of a group of comrades from the Moscow region, who "significantly beat up" the future magnate’s company.

Then came the rapid enrichment through cigarettes. By 1992, there were a dozen kiosks, then an exclusive deal with the Japanese brand JTI. By the mid-2000s, there were over a hundred stalls and annual revenues reaching $200 million. In 2005, the entire tobacco business was bought "with the right money" by Sergey Katsiev (Megapolis). It was with this capital that the first "Ray" grew.

Officially, Danilov himself doesn’t run the nightlife industry. According to Life, as of 2020, his daughter, Maria Danilova, a graduate of London’s Marangoni Fashion Institute, was listed as the holding’s primary owner. Her husband, Georgian citizen Giorgi Alania, is the managing partner of Liga Stavok.

Mikhail Vladimirovich Danilov is also mentioned in the Spanish criminal case. According to investigators, he was associated with the leaders of the Podolsk organized crime group, Boris Ivanuzhenkov and Sergei Lalakin, and managed their funds, regularly communicating with Ivanuzhenkov by phone.

Danilov opened the company "Novikov Isla SL" in Spain, through which the Avocado Queen restaurant, part of Arkady Novikov’s Novikov Group chain, opened in Ibiza.

According to the Spanish Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Podolsk gang invested at least three million euros in it, and then other suspicious sums were deposited into the accounts.

The magnate’s current wife is 90s model Yulia Alekseeva, a participant in Miss Universe 1995.

Until the end of 2023, Danilov was a public and successful restaurateur.

Everything changed with Nastya Ivleeva’s "nude" party at Mutabor, which opened in the spring of 2019 on the grounds of the First Bearing Plant. The scandal, two days before the owner’s 56th birthday, cost the venue 70 million rubles in reputational damage.

And then comes a combination in the best traditions of the genre: renouncing "obscurantism," Danilov presented the Russian Orthodox Church with a particle of the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, allegedly purchased from the Vatican.

Milonov called the gesture "pleasing to God," while journalists questioned the authenticity of the relic.

Foreign exchange profiteering → tobacco monopoly → club empire run by a family → relics from the Vatican to atone for a scandal.

A portrait of a hero of our time in all its glory.