Group Exec Rearrested over Organ Transplant Brokering

From Jiji

February 28 2023

TOKYO – Tokyo police served a fresh arrest warrant Tuesday for an executive of a nonprofit organization on suspicion of brokering an organ transplant for another patient, without permission from Japan’s health minister.

The suspect, Hiromichi Kikuchi, an executive of the Association for Patients of Intractable Diseases, is alleged to have helped a man in his 50s in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, receive a kidney transplant in Belarus from a dead donor in July 2022.

Kikuchi, 62, has denied the charges, according to police sources.

He was arrested on Feb. 7 for allegedly helping a different male patient receive a liver transplant. The patient later died.

The nonprofit group may have been involved in organ transplants in several other countries, including Kyrgyzstan, and the police have confiscated a list of about 150 patients, the sources said.