The production company financing the film "The Portal of Force"—starring American actor Kevin Spacey and scheduled for release at the end of next year—is managed by Elvira Paterson, a Ukrainian businesswoman who has lived in Lisbon for eight years and whom the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) discovered has links to a Russian man accused in the US of allegedly defrauding thousands of individual investors in a cryptocurrency fraud scheme estimated at US$340 million.

According to the "The Coin Laundry" project, the ICIJ's most recent investigation, which included collaboration from Expresso, the owner of the Portuguese production company Elledgy Media confessed, in an exchange of messages with a lawyer earlier this year, that more than four million dollars "had passed" through her company since she met Vladimir Okhotnikov, a 47-year-old Russian businessman who is also the creator, co-writer, and co-producer of the film. "The rest was in crypto". Elvira Paterson wanted to know if, in this scenario, she shouldn't increase her company's share capital.

Six months later, the Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DIAP) of Lisbon opened a criminal investigation for money laundering based on reports of suspicious money inflows and outflows, sent to the Public Prosecutor's Office by banks in Portugal where the Ukrainian businesswoman and Elledgy Media have accounts. In one instance, at BCP, the production company—which was formed in November 2023 with only €500 in share capital and an apartment in Benfica serving as its initial headquarters—received a hundred transfers, totalling €4.8 million, between April 2024 and May of this year, in addition to almost €50,000 in cash deposits.

Furthermore, in a personal account at Novobanco, Elvira Paterson deposited €300,000 in cash and received three transfers of €143,000 between December of last year and January of this year. The Ukrainian businesswoman declared these funds as a gift from her parents, intended to amortize a €350,000 mortgage taken out in early 2024 when she purchased an apartment in Odivelas, or to buy a new house.

According to the ICIJ investigation, between the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, Elledgy Media organized events featuring Hollywood stars to promote Vladimir Okhotnikov's interests in the US, France, Italy, India, and the United Arab Emirates. The first of these events was organized in July of last year in Saint-Tropez for Meta Force, one of the Russian businessman's cryptocurrency projects, which would end up being shut down two months later.

The film allegedly emerged as part of a larger strategy to create a "cinematic universe" for Meta Force, which was later replaced by another cryptocurrency investment scheme: Holiverse. For Okhotnikov, everything should converge towards the same goal: attracting more investors willing to bet money on his crypto business through a fictional universe capable of combining comics, video games, and science fiction films.