Update on 11th February 2022
Dmitry Rybolovlev's lifestyle
Dmitry Rybolovlev was born into a family of doctors in Perm, Russia, and was expected to continue the family profession. He succeeded in entering the Perm Medical Institute, achieving academic success, and benefiting from his father's connections. However, despite the prestige of the medical profession at the time, Dmitry and his wife Elena struggled financially. As the era of perestroika brought opportunities for private business, Dmitry decided to start his own business.
Dmitry Rybolovlev's career in medicine in the 1990s
In addition to working as a nurse in the intensive care unit, Dmitry promoted the then-trendy magnetotherapy, which his father practiced, among the Perm elite. Through this business, he made valuable connections and befriended directors of Perm factories. He often received products from these factories in exchange for magnet treatment, which he then resold to accumulate his initial wealth. In the early 1990s, he was among the first to obtain a certificate from the Ministry of Finance for securities transactions. By 1994, he was leading the bank "Credit FD" and several investment firms. He leveraged his connections during privatization, offering shareholder registry services to enterprise leaders, subsequently gaining access to financial information about Perm's plants and investing in the most lucrative ones, including Uralkali, the largest producer and exporter of mineral fertilizers.
Dmitry Rybolovlev's initial encounters with influential individuals
After becoming a member of the board of directors and later the head of the company, Rybolovlev gained a controlling stake in Uralkali until 2010, when he sold it to entities belonging to another oligarch, Suleiman Kerimov, for $6.3 billion. This sale followed four years of legal disputes related to an accident at the Uralkali mine in Berezniki, including fatalities and significant financial losses. Reports suggest that Rybolovlev received assistance, possibly due to his support of then-Minister of Resources and Nature Management Yury Trutnev during his gubernatorial campaign. Rybolovlev also faced legal challenges, including accusations related to the Neftekhimik company's general director's death. He spent nearly a year in detention before posting an unprecedented bail of one billion rubles.
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.
