Nikolai Shamalov

Nikolai Terent'yevich Shamalov, Nikolai Terent'evich Shamalov or Nikolai Terentievich Shamalov (Николай Терентьевич Шамалов; born 24 January 1950) is a Belarusian-born Russian dentist, businessman, and a founding member of Ozero.

He is a close confidante of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Shamalov grew rich after obtaining a stake in Bank Rossiya.

Shamalov is a dentist/physician by training.

He is fluent in German.

Until the 1990s, Shamalov worked as a dentist in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg).

Shamalov was a representative of Siemens in St. Petersburg from 1992 to 2008 selling medical equipment for Siemens Medical Systems.

According to Sergei Kolesnikov, Shamalov refused to answer questions by Siemens internal investigators about money laundering, corruption, and bribery.

This led to Shamalov's dismissal from Siemens.

In January 1992, AOZT/ZAO Petromed was founded with 51% of its shares owned by the Saint Petersburg's Committee on External Relations (KVS) which Putin headed, 39% of its shares owned by the Center for International Cooperation which is headed by Dmitri Gorelov, and 10% of its shares owned by the Saint Petersburg Committee on Health.

Andrey Kolesnikov, a biophysicist from the Polytechnic Institute, formed a cooperative to manufacture medical equipment for Petromed.

From 1993 to 1995, he worked in the Committee on External Relations of the St. Petersburg Mayor's Office.

Vladimir Putin was his boss.

In 1993, Shamalov was hired by Putin as the Petromed's purchasing agent for Siemens medical equipment from Germany instead of buying from Kolesnikov's cooperative's Russian manufactured equipment.

Over many years, Petromed received state funds for the purchase of medical equipment, but Putin also demanded that Russian oligarchs make charitable contributions to Petromed for the purchase of medical equipment.

However, Shamalov greatly inflated the purchase price of the medical equipment and then funneled 33% of the money to offshore accounts.

After Vladimir Yakovlev, who was the Governor of Saint Petersburg, became a very outspoken critic of Petromed, Putin, and corruption, Gorelev and Kolesnikov bought out the Saint Petersburg Committee on Health portion of Petromed and became the only two owners of Petromed.

Later, Gorelov, Kolesnikov, and Shamalov used the funneled money, which they obtained as overcharges to Petromed, to purchase shares in Rossiya Bank, Vyborg Shipyard, and other entities.

In 1994, he founded the company Masterdentservis ("Мастердентсервис") in Leningrad.

On 10 November 1996, he was a founding member of Vladimir Putin's closed gate community, the cooperative Ozero.

In early 1997 and previously, Shamalov's family and the family of Vladimir Putin and Lyudmila Ocheretnaya vacationed together in Davos, Switzerland.

In 2004, he, Yuri Kovalchuk, and Dmitry Vladimirovich Gorelov became co-owners of Bank Rossiya.

Shamalov has the second-largest stake in Bank Rossiya.

On 18 October 2005, he, Sergei Kolesnikov, and Gorelov founded Rosinvest.

Using money that Shamalov had funneled from Petromed to offshore accounts and money that was from the Russian state treasury, this company built the health resort in Gelendzhik known as "Putin's Palace" which was part of "project south" (Проекту Юг).

To finance "Putin's Palace", Shamalov's expertise in selling medical equipment through Siemens in St Petersburg was essential in obtaining several hundreds of millions of dollars out of the $1 billion intended for Russian healthcare improvements.

Shamalov is the original legal owner of "Putin's Palace."

In 2006, he became a co-owner with a controlling share (10%) of Vyborg Shipyard.

Dmitri Gorelov's son Vasili Gorelov is another owner of Vyborg Shipyard.

In 2010, he, his son Kirill, and Oleg Vitalyevich Sharykin (Олег Витальевич Шарыкин) became co-owners of the Russian Cement Company (Русскую цементную компанию (РЦК)).

Nikolai owns a 12.5% share.

Kirill owns a 5% share and is on the board of directors.

Between 2010 and 2016 with support from Bank Rossiya, he became the beneficial owner of land in Karelia near Ladoga in the Lakhdenpokhsky District.

In 2011, to support the Russian Defense Ministry, Roscosmos, and ROSATOM, he and Oleg Sharykin formed the joint company Ceramic Technologies (совместную компанию "Керамические технологии") which has two main projects: (1) the creation of silicon carbide pencil boxes for the long-term storage and disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste in underground sites and (2) the development and production of silicon carbide optical blocks in telescopes and sensors used in remote sensing surveillance satellites, which also can detect asteroid hazards and explore deep space.

Ceramic Technologies is a member of the Lebedev Institute of Physics (FIAN) through the Troitsk Technopark (Троицкий технопарк ФИАН) and the Skolkovo Foundation but receives no investment and no funding from either.

Also, Sharykin said that we have in Kemerovo "Khimprom" ("Химпром") and PO "Tokem" ("Токем"), which competes with Lanxess, Dow Chemical, and Mitsubishi Chemical for monodisperse copolymers in resin ion exchangers for nuclear reactors at nuclear power plants, nuclear-powered ships (both icebreakers and submarines), and water treatment in the chemical and metallurgical industries.

On 28 June 2013, he was the second-largest shareholder in Bank Rossiya owning around 10.5% of the total shares.

As of October 2015, ROSATOM purchases 40% of its needs for resin ion exchangers from NATO countries, but the Kemerovo production sites are expected to meet 100% of ROSATOM needs by 2017.

As of 2016, Shamalov has remained a member of the cooperative Ozero.

The Shamalov's combined stake is estimated to be 15 billion rubles in 2018.