Skorobogatko, together with his partner Alexander Ponomarenko, launched a perfume manufacturing company and construction material business in the Crimea in the late 1980s.[5]
In 1996, he and Ponomarenko founded the Russian General Bank in Moscow. The bank survived the 1998 crisis and was ranked as a “top 100 bank” in Russia by Interfax[6] In 2006, the bank was sold to Hungarian OTP Bank for $477 million according to Vedomosti.[citation needed]
Starting in 1998, the partners began to purchase shares in a number of stevedoring companies in the Tsemess Bay of Novorossiysk. In 2006 they were combined to form the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port (NCSP), which became the largest port in Russia. In 2007, NCSP went public and was listed on the London Stock Exchange.[7]
In 2003, Skorobogatko was elected as a deputy member of the State Duma and stepped back from all private entrepreneurial activities.[citation needed]
In November 2017 an investigation conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism cited his name in the list of politicians named in "Paradise Papers" allegations.[8]
Skorobogatko is one of many "Russian oligarchs" named in a report that was included in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, CAATSA, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2017. The report stated that the U.S. Department of the Treasury had compiled the list by enumerating individuals who, "according to reliable public sources," have an estimated net worth of $1 billion or more.[9] The Department of the Treasury made clear that this was not a sanctions list, although some of the 210 individuals on the list were already subject to U.S. sanctions.[10]
