[2][4][5] Skorobogatko, together with his partner Alexander Ponomarenko, launched a perfume manufacturing company and construction material business in the Crimea in the late 1980s.

[citation needed] Starting in 1998, the partners began to purchase shares in a number of stevedoring companies in the Tsemess Bay of Novorossiysk.

[8] In 2003, Skorobogatko was elected as a deputy member of the State Duma and stepped back from all private entrepreneurial activities.

[9] 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.