Prosecutors indicted the director of a Tokyo-based nonprofit organization and the NPO for arranging organ transplants in Belarus for Japanese patients in violation of the Organ Transplant Law.
According to the Monday indictment, Hiromichi Kikuchi, the director of the Intractable Disease Patient Support Association, made arrangements for a man in his 40 s who was suffering from cirrhosis to receive a liver transplant and a man in his 50 s with kidney failure to receive a kidney transplant over the period from January 2021 to July last year. Both operations took place in Belarus.
Kikuchi was not given a license from the government to arrange such procedures, the indictment alleges.
The liver transplant patient transferred 33 million to the NPO's account, while the kidney transplant patient transferred 18.5 million.
This is the first time that shadowy overseas organ transplants in Japan and abroad have been criticized for criminal charges.
After surgery, the condition of a man who received a liver transplant in February last year worsened. He died in November 2022 after returning to Japan after receiving another transplant of a liver donated by a family member.
The NPO continued to arrange organ transplants despite criticism from advanced countries who pay to receive organs from donors in developing nations, according to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office. Some of the patients who received transplants died or became seriously ill, according to the prosecutors.
Prosecutors haven't confirmed whether there has been an admission or denial of guilt. According to the Metropolitan Police Department, Kikuchi did not admit to the charges after his arrest, saying I did not mediate organ transplants. Prosecutors are expected to present their case to the Tokyo District Court, believing that NPO's actions constituted mediation.
In August last year, The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the NPO was suspected of facilitating an overseas kidney transplant from a living donor who used a trafficked kidney in Kyrgyzstan.
On February 7, the MPD arrested Kikuchi on suspicion of violating the law and proceeded to gather evidence of wrongdoing. The case has revealed a loophole in the law, under which the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry does not have investigative authority over unlicensed mediation groups.