Bulgaria: Bulgarian officials are investigating allegations that a hospital in the capital, Sofia, was at the centre of a lucrative black market for transplant organs.
Prof Krassimir Gigov, who has run the hospital since the former management was sacked for alleged financial irregularities, said the St Ekaterina clinic had kept no written records proving a direct family relationship between donors and recipients of at least 20 kidneys.
Bulgarian media quoted Health Minister Radoslav Gaydarski saying most of the organs came from poor Russians, Chechens, Georgians and Moldovans who had Israeli passports and claimed to be relatives of the wealthy Israeli transplant patients.
"How should I know?" former hospital director Dr Alexander Chirkov told the Monitor daily newspaper. "They all say they are relatives, back there in Israel." "They all signed a declaration saying that they donate their organs voluntarily and not for commercial reasons and take responsibility if found to have signed a lie. This has nothing to do with us," he insisted, denying all wrongdoing.
Bulgarian news agency BTA said each kidney recipient had paid some €15,000 for the procedure.
Trading in human organs is illegal in Bulgaria, where only blood relatives or spouses can become donors. Anyone caught trading in human organs from live donors faces up to eight years in jail.
Last March, Bulgarian police arrested three people for allegedly transporting at least six Bulgarians to a private clinic in neighbouring Turkey, where their kidneys were removed and sold to waiting transplant patients.
Bulgaria is under intense pressure from the European Union to crack down on organised crime, or face a one-year postponement of its accession to the union. It hopes to join the 25-nation EU in 2007, along with Romania.
