[11] As a doctor's income was no longer enough to comfortably support a family during the final years of the Soviet Union, he began his first business project, a small medical enterprise that served the workers of local factories he set up together with his father, a professor of medicine.

[15] In 1992, 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 Russia and the first in the Perm region, which permitted him to trade and deal with securities.

[11] 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.

While the overall market outlook for mineral fertilizers improved over this time, reforms made under Rybolovlev's leadership played an important role in transforming a Soviet-era enterprise into a worldwide industry leader.

[12] Following this rapid growth throughout the early 2000s, in 2002 Uralkali built the Baltic Bulk Terminal in St. Petersburg port as its own transport hub, providing the company with a high-tech universal transshipment complex for mineral fertilizers, and thereby improving logistics capabilities.

[22][23][24] There were plans to float Uralkali on the London Stock Exchange in 2006, but Rybolovlev canceled the listing after the order book had already been closed because he considered the company's valuation by investors to be unfairly low.

[28] The listing attracted major international investors due to the company's strong financial results and proved to be a pivot point for the traditionally closed-off Russian chemical industry, setting new standards for corporate governance transparency.

[36] In October 2006, a freshwater spring began flowing into one of Uralkali's mines under the city of Berezniki, leading the walls and pillars supporting the ceilings of large caverns to dissolve.

[45] A report in The New York Times suggested that the situation was partially caused by the fact that Berezniki began as a Soviet labor camp, and was built directly over the mine to be within marching distance of work areas.

[46] Alleged state asset grab In October 2008, Russian Vice Premier Igor Sechin reopened the investigation, prompting speculation in international news outlets, including The New York Times, that a raider attack had been launched against Uralkali.

[48] Industry analysts at the time considered the re-opening of the investigation "an opportunistic move to gain a foothold in that industry or take some assets", where individuals close to the top echelons of government had sought to expand into the natural resources sector, in line with Putin's view that "Russia made a colossal error in the 1990s by allowing its enormous reserves of oil, gas and other natural resources to fall into private hands.

Étienne Franzi, Monaco's former president, and the DNCG, the French football authority, both gave positive assessments of the club's progress after Rybolovlev's first year of ownership in December 2012.

Monaco became one of the most prodigious spenders in European football in the summer of 2013 under Rybolovlev's presidency, spending £146 million on players including Radamel Falcao, James Rodríguez and João Moutinho.

He stated "There are two ways to go... One is either you invest a lot of money and do it quickly, the other is you build up an intelligent project and you have to base yourself on your academy and sound principles of working and scouting well and basically that's what we've decided to do.

[86] An expedition organized into the Perm Krai by the same NGO in 2010, when Rybolovlev was still the company's owner, revealed that Uralkali's sinks contained at least 16 harmful elements (including zinc and ammonium), exceeding the maximum permissible levels by 1,850 times.

[87] According to Green Patrol's president, Roman Pukalov, Uralkali failed to fully disclose a complete list of harmful elements that it routinely ejected into the local river Kama.

[89] In April 2016, it was alleged by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)[90] that Rybolovlev used a company registered in the Virgin Islands to hide art from his former wife Elena during their divorce proceeding.

[92] Rybolvlev and his attorneys gave statements to media reports claiming the offshore structures established by the Rybolovlev family trust pre-dated the divorce proceedings by several years (but according to Monsecas leaked records the items at issue were moved out of Switzerland into London and Singapore which were out of his wife's reach using the Xitrans Finance Ltd owned by Family trust that only Dmitry and not his wife had access to ensuring the assets in it were not available to her in the divorce.

[128][129] Rybolovlev's art collection has included paintings by Paul Gauguin, Auguste Rodin, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Mark Rothko.

[161] In October 2018, Rybolovlev launched a lawsuit against Sotheby's in Manhattan federal court, alleging that the auction house "materially assisted the largest art fraud in history".

[169] In July 2020, criminal proceedings against Bouvier for fraud and money laundering were dismissed by Monaco's Court of Revision on the procedural grounds that "the investigations had been conducted in a biased and unfair manner".

[172] After the Swiss prosecutor closed the investigation, Rybolovlev's lawyers filed an appeal claiming the case was "one of the most serious the art world has ever known, be duly considered and finally judged on its merits".

[178] The artworks in question are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and include works by Gustav Klimt, Rene Magritte, and Amedeo Modigliani, along with The Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.

[178] The judge's ruling also confirms that Samuel Valette, a senior director and vice chairman of Sotheby's private sales worldwide for the Impressionist and Modern art department, "was aware of Bouvier's price manipulation and the essence of his scheme.

[182] Samuel Valette, Sotheby's senior vice president and head of private sales for EMEA, testified that the information in Bouvier's emails to Rybolovlev's aide to justify the price of artworks was “a complete fiction”.

[183] On January 30, the ten-member jury found that the auction house didn't aid in defrauding Rybolovlev by secretly and significantly marking up the prices of 4 artworks sold to the Russian collector.

According to Rybolovlev’s attorney, Me Martin Reynaud, legal proceedings concerning corruption and influence peddling in Monaco could no longer continue as their basis was now considered illicitly obtained by Monegasque judiciary authorities.

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland initiated criminal proceedings in 2017 and accused Rybolovlev of “performing illegally for a foreign state” by allegedly arranging for Bouvier to be apprehended by Monaco’s police.

[189][190][188] In 2010, Rybolovlev was awarded the Order of St Seraphim of Sarov I degree by Patriarch Kirill for funding the restoration of the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God in Zachatyevsky Convent.

[198][199] In 2022, in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it was announced by AS Monaco that the club and Rybolovlev, in a personal capacity, donated to the Monegasque Red Cross to support its efforts of delivering humanitarian aid to civilian victims of the conflict.