NPO Exec Nabbed for Alleged Illegal Organ Transplant Mediation

Tokyo, Feb. 9 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo police have arrested a 62-year-old executive of a nonprofit organization supporting patients of intractable diseases for allegedly mediating an organ transplant without obtaining permission in violation of the organ transplant law.

This marked the first arrest in Japan over unauthorized organ transplant mediation.

Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department also sent papers on the NPO, the Association for Patients of Intractable Diseases in Meguro Ward in the Japanese capital to public prosecutors.

The MPD suspects that the NPO official, Hiromichi Kikuchi, helped a man in Tokyo travel to Belarus so that he could undergo a liver transplant there from a dead donor in February 2022, without obtaining approval from the Japanese health minister.

Kikuchi has denied part of the allegations against him, telling the police that he believed no permission is required for mediating an organ transplant abroad.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]