His private ventures included trading foreign currency, moonlighting on a second job in a bakery with a counterfeit permit as well as typesetting and printing Bibles using government presses and ink.

In 1998 he merged his agribusiness assets in Agroprombank (acquired in 1996), which was renamed SBS-Agro and gave the businessman a tremendous influence at the Kremlin.

[4] He also declared that his banking activities had not gone bankrupt, but solely split into several structures spread throughout the country and managed by an advanced computer system.

[6] By 2003 he renamed his group OVK Bank, turned it over to his son Nikolay, who sold it to Vladimir Potanin two months later.

In 2019 a company associated with Smolensky sold the last four office complexes in Moscow, including the famous Alexander House, the former headquarters of Vladimir Putin.