Rybolovlev became chairman of the Russian fertilizer producer Uralkali in His hobbies include sailing where his yachts named Skorpis race competitively winning the ClubSwan 50 World Championship [7] and taking line honour in the Fastnet Race [8] sailing his ClubSwan Dmitry Rybolovlev born in Russian family, in Perm. A Wagner. He entered the business world in after graduating from the Perm Medical Institute. Rybolovlev earned his first million dollars by reselling products, which the factories used to pay for in services rather than cash as was then a common practice in Russia.
In , Rybolovlev went to Moscow to take a business course and received a brokerage license from the Russian Ministry of Finance , one of the first in Russian and the first in the Perm region, which permitted him to trade and deal with securities.
Upon his return to Perm, he founded a brokerage and investment company and started buying up shares of local enterprises such as Uralkali, Silvinit, Azot, Metafrax, and Solikamskbumprom.
In early , Rybolovlev persuaded directors of these and some other enterprises to establish a bank, which he headed. He later decided to concentrate on two assets, Uralkali and Silvinit, given that the Russian potash industry was underdeveloped at the time due to the lack of interest from investors, unlike in the oil and gas sectors. Additionally, no one had been able to acquire controlling stakes in the industry's firms. The violent nature of capital accumulation in early to mids Russia, including in the country's industrially developed regions like the Perm Krai, gave rise to violent criminals battling over control of companies and imposing "protection" fees on businesses.
Refusing to cooperate with criminal gangs, Rybolovlev was forced to hire a bodyguard in before moving his family to safety in Switzerland in He also assigned bodyguards to all the directors of his enterprises, with only one, Evgeny Panteleimonov, director of Neftekhimik, refusing to accept. That same year, Evgeny Panteleimonov was killed at the doorstep of his house. A local gangster, Oleg Lomakin, turned out to be the organizer of the murder and was detained in April The judge concluded that the gangsters had killed the director of the company for breaking off relations with "Trade House FD".
