Victims were promised up to $20,000, while recipients were required to pay from $110,000 to $137,000.
According to the indictment obtained Thursday, the victims came from Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkey and lived in “extreme poverty or acute financial distress.’’
The EU prosecution has made requests to secure evidence from authorities in Canada, Germany, Kazakhstan, and Turkey, including access to e-mails of two suspects on servers in the United States.
Five Kosovo nationals, including Ilir Rrecaj, a former senior health ministry official, have been charged with five counts ranging from trafficking in persons to unlawful exercise of medical activity and abuse of power. None of the suspects is in custody.
Two others — Turkish doctor Yusuf Sonmez and Israeli citizen Moshe Harel — are listed as wanted by Interpol. Sonmez is the subject of several criminal proceedings in other countries, including Turkey, for human trafficking and removal of organs, according to the indictment.
“Both Sonmez and Harel are fugitives from justice,’’ the indictment said.
The prosecution alleges that one of the five, Kosovo surgeon Lutfi Dervishi, was the ringleader of the criminal group. It said Dervishi attended a medical conference in Istanbul in 2006 and asked for someone who could perform organ transplants. He was contacted by Sonmez six months later.
Dervishi and Sonmez then carried out the operations in the private medical clinic Medicus, managed by Dervishi’s son, Arban Dervishi, who was also indicted. Harel was involved in “identifying, recruiting, and transporting victims’’ and “ensuring the delivery of cash payments by electronic bank transfer’’ prior to surgery, the indictment said. Two other doctors, Sokol Hajdini and Driton Jilta, were also indicted.
Another two doctors, Israeli national Zaki Shapira and Turkish national Kenan Demirkol, are identified in the 46-page document as “unindicted co-conspirators.’’
Kosovo law forbids the removal and transplant of organs.
