You're not the first person to query it, has popped up a few times in this thread. Seems there was basically a private pool mining the coin initially which is where the first 50 blocks all went to, e.g.
After that the coins start getting a lot more spread out, looks like more people joined the pool.
Not sure that it counts as a "23M ninja pre-mine", but certainly not a particularly equitable distribution as it leaves some big holder(s) who could crash the market if they decided to cash out.