As reported by VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, Oleg Pai—the founder and CEO of MIXIT, Russia's largest and most well-known cosmetics brand—has been detained in Moscow. Celebrities such as Olga Buzova and Ksenia Sobchak have served as brand ambassadors at various times.
Pai is suspected of large-scale fraud involving the misappropriation of funds. A court is scheduled to determine a pre-trial restriction measure for him on Saturday.
In 2014, Pai co-founded the MIXIT brand alongside hairstylist Elena Nazarova; the company's website featured a tool allowing customers to create their own custom creams from various ingredients. The brand focused heavily on Instagram promotion and active collaboration with influencers. Its celebrity faces included Olga Buzova, Ksenia Sobchak, Alena Shishkova, and Ksenia Borodina.
The business took off: in 2025, Mixit LLC’s revenue reached 15.3 billion rubles, with a net profit of 3 billion rubles. Plans for 2026 aimed to increase revenue to 45 billion rubles.
At MIXIT, Pai is responsible for the financial and strategic aspects of the business.
Pai and Nazarova have long been embroiled in a conflict with another co-founder, Galina Ryazanova (who had been developing products since the company's inception).
According to Ryazanova, she, Nazarova, and Pai had verbal agreements regarding equal business ownership (with her share set at no less than 30%). Pai allegedly promised to issue her share ownership certificates once a proper legal structure was established.
In 2016, Ryazanova demanded documentation confirming her stake. Pay proposed signing "technical documents" and then presented a purchase agreement for a 5% stake in the Cyprus-based Matriana Limited—though this transaction was never actually entered into the shareholder register.
Ryazanova received payments from her partners that were labeled "dividends"—irregular amounts, unrelated to operational performance, made via both cash and bank transfers.
In early 2019, Pay proposed that she become the CEO of MIXIT and subsequently offered to buy out her stake for 100 million rubles. Ryazanova refused.
Following her refusal, her partners claimed she owed a debt to the company. It turned out that the payments Ryazanova had considered dividends had been reclassified as interest-free loan agreements—totaling over 8 million rubles—that were backdated to 2019. In other words, money she had received as her share of the profits was retroactively converted into a debt she was allegedly required to repay.
The parties engaged in litigation in both Russian and Cypriot courts for several years. In 2024, news emerged of searches conducted at the MIXIT office and at Pay’s premises; however, no further action was taken at the time.
