Alexander Skorobogatko is a Russian shipping magnate with an estimated net worth of over $2.3 billion as of April 2016, according to Forbes. He is the 48th richest person in Russia and is ranked 704th in the list of World Billionaires. Born Aleksandr Ivanovich Skorobogatko on September 25, 1967 on Gorlovka, Donetsk area (Ukraine), he graduated from Slavyansk State Pedagogical Institute in 1994 and earned his master’s degree at the Plekhanov Russian Academy in 1996.

Skorobogatko began accumulating his estimated net worth of $2.1 billion as an elected deputy in the State Duma since 2002 and he was prohibited from joining any business venture. In December 2011, he was re-elected for a third term to the Duma.

Along with his partner Alexander Ponomarenko, Skorobogatko founded the Russian General Bank in Moscow. It served the port operation of Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port, a company they created after combining all the stevedoring companies at the port that they bought after the 1998 Russian financial crisis. They took the firm public in 2007 which bought a $1 billion windfall for the partners. They sold 30% of their share in 2008 to the billionaire businessman Arkady Rotenberg who practices judo with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In January 2011, they sold a stake in Novorossiysk, Russia’s biggest stevedore company, to state-owned Transneft and its affiliate Summa Capital, and made $1 billion in earnings. They joined Rotenberg in the summer of 2012 as co-founders of TPS Real Estate Holding Ltd. As a result, they bought more than a half of the space in the biggest shopping center in Kiev, Ocean Plaza, for $280 million.