Until the 1990s, Shamalov worked as a dentist in Leningrad (
Saint Petersburg). In 1994, he founded the company Masterdentservis () in Leningrad. 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. 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 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. 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. As of 2016, Shamalov has remained a member of 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. 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" (). 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. Dmitri Gorelov's son Vasili Gorelov is another owner of Vyborg Shipyard. In 2011, to support the
Russian Defense Ministry,
Roscosmos, and
ROSATOM, he and Oleg Sharykin formed the joint company Ceramic Technologies () 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. and the
Skolkovo Foundation but receives no investment and no funding from either. On 28 June 2013, he was the second-largest shareholder in Bank Rossiya owning around 10.5% of the total shares. According to the Panama Papers, his Bank Rossiya staff in St Petersburg sent all their confidential instructions through a firm of Swiss attorneys in Zurich, Dietrich Baumgartner and Partners, to have
Mossack Fonseca (Mossfon) establish a British Virgin Islands shell company, Sandalwood Continental Ltd, to hide large sums of Vladimir Putin's personal wealth that had been in bank accounts at the Russian Commercial Bank (RCB) of Cyprus, which is a bank owned by
VTB and is now known as
RCB Bank. Some of this money was transferred from
Sergei Roldugin's Sandalwood Continental Ltd to Ozon LLC to purchase and develop the
Igora ski resort. As of January 2019, Shamalov and Yuri Kovalchuk through their ownership of Rossiya Bank have become the most important investors in Russia's development of its illegal annexation of Crimea during the ongoing
Russo-Ukrainian War. His nickname is Professor Filip Filippovich Preobrazhensky () or the "Professor of the Transfiguration," who was the central character that transforms from a stray dog into a
New Soviet man in
Mikhail Bulgakov’s
Heart of a Dog. ==Personal wealth==