Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World

by Oliver Bullough

Different groups specialized in different aspects of the healthcare scam, but in general the pattern was the same. Health ministry officials allied with private sector companies to dominate a part of the budget, whether that was supplying medicine or equipment, repairing buildings, or controlling the passage of new legislation. Business was conducted via shell companies in Cyprus to hide the scams from oversight, and billions of dollars were sucked out of the country. Anti-corruption activists worked out that, in 2012, Ukraine’s health ministry was overpaying for HIV and TB medications by 150–300 percent, compared to charities that bought the same drugs; and this was at a time when there wasn’t enough money to provide anti-retrovirals to everyone who needed them. The same handful of distributors popped up again and again, hiding behind shell companies, and competing against themselves in a process that looked transparent but which was really a sham. The whole process was protected by senior officials, and everyone got a share.