The Dark Side of Surrogacy

In recent years, Ukraine has become one of the leading providers in this field of business. The market leader in Ukraine a company called Biotexcom. Over the past six months, an international research team from WELT (Germany), POLITICO (USA) and Newsweek Polska (Poland) has been looking into the business. The team of reporters uncovered dubious practices in which the company is involved – and which may be representative of the surrogacy market as a whole.

These practices include mixing up embryos and even children. The team of reporters found and interviewed about a dozen of parents who had bad experiences with the company. They also spoke to investigators in Ukraine who described how they investigated Biotexcom's business – and how and why the head of the company was not convicted because of his influential contacts in high Ukrainian politics.