Update in 11.02.2022
Dmitry Rybolovlev way of life
Dmitry Rybolovlev, born into a family of Perm doctors, was supposed to continue the dynasty. Until some time he was able to do so: entering the Perm Medical Institute at the first attempt, getting a red diploma, interning in a hospital, brilliant prospects, given the great connections of his father, a well-known physiotherapist in the city. But despite the prestige of the doctor’s profession in Soviet times, the young family of Dmitry and his wife Elena lacked money catastrophically, perestroika was on the way, opportunities for private business appeared, and then the future multibillionaire decided to start his own business.
Dmitry Rybolovlev’s medical career in the 90s
Working as a nurse in the intensive care unit for the labor book, in his spare time he promoted among the Perm elite the then fashionable magnetotherapy, which his father was engaged in. Dmitri succeeded in this business, made useful connections, and became friends with the directors of Perm factories. Often they paid for the magnet treatment not with money but with the products of their enterprises, on the resale of which Rybolovlev made his first capital. In the early 1990s the Perm entrepreneur was one of the first to receive a certificate of the Ministry of Finance for operations with securities, and in 1994 he already headed the bank “Credit FD” and several investment companies. Acquaintances with the leaders of Perm Rybolovlev successfully used during the privatization: he offered them services in keeping the register of shareholders, which appeared in great numbers at each enterprise as a result of the voucher campaign “named after Chubais. Thus, the former medical doctor became aware of financial information about practically all Perm plants and began to buy shares in the most profitable of them, including Uralkali, the largest producer and exporter of mineral fertilizers.
Dmitry Rybolovlev’s first meetings with iconic people
Having become first a member of the board of directors and later the head of the company, Rybolovlev held a controlling stake in Uralkali until 2010, when he resold it to structures of another oligarch, Suleiman Kerimov, for $6.3 billion. The sale was preceded by four years of legal proceedings over the accident at the Uralkali mine in Berezniki (flooding the mine with human casualties and billions in losses). By the way, Rybolovlev’s useful acquaintances helped him here too. Media reports claim that Rybolovlev was helped by then-Minister of Resources and Nature Management Yury Trutnev to avoid a huge fine and loss of reputation for the disaster, probably in gratitude for the fact that the oligarch had sponsored his election campaign for Governor of the Perm Region in the early 2000s. The court also tried to sue Rybolovlev himself, but before that, in the “wild” 90s. He was accused of nothing less than the murder of Yevgeny Panteleimonov, the general director of the Neftekhimik company. The businessman had to serve almost a year in a detention center, until he finally managed to pay his way out and pay a bail of one billion rubles, which was unprecedented at the time.
Dmitry Rybolovlev after “Uralkali” sale
After the sale of Uralkali shares, Suleimanov gave him the Voentorg building, a tidbit in the center of Moscow. But the businessman wanted to get rid of it as well as his main asset of potassium as quickly as possible – by that time he understood that he would not get anywhere in Russia and his relations with the Kremlin were not developing. Adding fuel to the fire was Rybolovlev’s refusal to participate in the financing of road construction in the Perm Territory, which the authorities tried to impose on him. In 2014, he put his last major Russian asset, Voentorg, up for sale and finally transferred the entire business abroad. Dmitry Rybolovlev currently owns luxury real estate in Switzerland and Monaco. It was in this dwarf principality in the center of Europe, he moved for permanent residence. In 2010, he bought shares of the Bank of Cyprus and the Monaco Football Club, on the profit of which he lives.
According to the latest data from Forbes magazine, Dmitry Rybolovlev’s fortune is estimated at $7.3 billion. In the Russian list of richest people, he ranks 15th as of 2017, although last year, with $400 million more, he was on the 12th line. At the same time, Bloomberg in 2016 estimated the oligarch’s fortune at $9 billion. In the ranking of the richest people in the world, the former orderly, who used to clean up after patients and now lives in the Bohemian Principality, ranked 112th.