[2][3] After he left Russia, his revelations of large scale corruption in President Putin's inner circle led to investigations in major Western media.
He holds a doctorate from the Sergei Kirov Military Medical Academy, and spent 20 years as a scientist specialising in the applications of biophysics in medicine.
[7] In 1991, he and scientific colleagues combined with the Saint Petersburg health authorities to found a state enterprise to manufacture medical equipment which they had been developing.
[7] Kolesnikov's involvement in this is described in his letter to Medvedev and has been covered by the media, notably by David Ignatius in The Washington Post, who concluded from his investigations that 'Kolesnikov is one of those brave souls a journalist meets occasionally, who decides to expose what he sees as wrongdoing, regardless of the personal risks.
Shamalov, on behalf of Putin, proposed the following scheme: Petromed would be commissioned to undertake a number of health infrastructure projects, funded by oligarchs, including Roman Abramovich.
Kolesnikov claims that he became disillusioned when, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, he was instructed that all funds were to be directed to Putin's Palace and investment projects on which people's livelihoods depended were to be shut down.