n selling its blockbuster anticancer drug Keytruda to the Russian government, the pharmaceutical giant Merck turned to a hospital supplier with friends in high places: Alexey Repik, a now-sanctioned oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and fluent in the ways of Russia and Western business.

A native of Moscow, trained as an economist, Repik started R-Pharm in 2001 after selling his car and borrowing $15,000 from his mother. Serving as an intermediary for pharmaceutical firms bidding on massive government contracts for medicine, the firm took off.

In 2009, the year New Jersey-based Merck forged a strategic alliance with R-Pharm, the Russian company was expanding and soon teamed up with other Western firms and formed new lines of business.