With so much hidden behind the shifting screens of offshore, it is difficult to know what is really going on. Marchenko said he knew of a big European pharmaceutical company that had broken ties with its Ukrainian distributors because it feared they were corrupt, taking up with a new Ukrainian partner instead. Marchenko was surprised to discover, however, that the new partner was owned by the same people as the old one, and the realignment had been entirely cosmetic, obscured by shell companies and designed to keep US prosecutors off the big company’s track.
