Judges’ comments: Bloomberg Markets makes its worldwide reach felt with these thorough reports on the human toll of the illicit trade in organs. Senior writer Michael Smith (Santiago) called upon a legion of reporters to track down donors, recipients and government officials. This team identified the nations whose citizenry play the largest role in perpetuating this trade. They showed the vast disparity between what is paid and what the donor receives. And, they documented the debilitating – and sometimes tragic – losses suffered by both donors and recipients.
List date(s) this work was published or aired.
“Lethal Commerce” in June 2011 and “Cash, Criminals and Human Organs” in December 2011 issues of Bloomberg Markets magazine.
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
Bloomberg Markets magazine senior writer Michael Smith is the first journalist to identify and report the stories of impoverished victims, brokers and doctors involved in illicit organ transplant trafficking in Latin America, Europe and Africa. Smith traveled for much of 2011 in poor neighborhoods and hospitals in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru, as well as former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe. He documented how illegal networks of brokers and physicians exploit the poor and profit from wealthy Americans, Europeans and Israelis in need of kidney transplants. The result is often injury, sometimes death and usually a life of humiliation for both those selling and buying kidneys. Smith showed how 23-year-old Luis Picado, a Nicaraguan laborer, believed he’d break his way out of poverty by selling a kidney?and, instead, the high school dropout died because of botched surgery. Smith used only on-the-record interviews, hospital records and police documents to go inside the growing criminal market for organ transplants that spans the globe. In the U.S. alone, 110,693 people are on waiting lists for organs, and fewer than 15,000 donors are found annually. In Colombia, 321 foreigners got transplants from 2005 to 2010, Smith learned. In Peru, prosecutors are investigating 61 transplants in seven of Lima’s top hospitals. In the slums of Lima, brokers found people like Vilma Bramon. She and her husband and four children live in a derelict home with no running water. The family had no money in 2008. So Vilma sold her kidney for $6,000. The broker who offered her the deal collected $150,000 from a man from Spain who needed the organ. Immediately after her surgery, Vilma was moved to an intensive care bed, suffering from high fever, nausea and a urinary tract blockage. She’s been in severe pain ever since, and can’t sleep on her left side because of a deep scar from the surgery. Smith accompanied her to surgeon in January this year. The doctor concluded that Vilma was the victim of a poorly made incision which slashed her nerves. The damage can’t be reversed, the doctor told her. In Europe, Smith and Krasnolutska found people like Aliaksei Yafimau, a 30-year-old unemployed man in Belarus, who answered an ad offering easy money to anyone willing to sell a kidney. He ended up taking a dark journey around the world and was effectively kidnapped by organ traffickers who held him in a room in Ecuador for four weeks, before the black marketers found a person and a hospital willing to participate in an illegal transplant. Yafimau says he tried to back out of the arrangement, but an enforcer threatened to kill his family unless he participated.
Desperate Americans Buy Kidneys From Peru Poor in Fatal Trade
Delmonico Says Many Hazards in Illicit Organ Transplants
Organ Gangs Force Poor to Sell Kidneys for Desperate Israelis
Organ Traffickers Coerce, Intimidate Impoverished
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Smith couldn’t use FOI requests for public records in Latin America and Europe. He talked with prosecutors and police (Smith is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese) who shared public records with him, and he and Krasnolutska (who speaks Russian and other dialects) worked with lawyers to get law enforcement records that the Eastern European governments were unwilling to release.
Explain types of human sources used.
The people made the stories strong. Smith, working alone in Latin America, went to impoverished villages in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru to find people who sold kidneys and were willing to tell their stories on-the-record. In Europe, Smith and Krasnolutska did the same in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. In the former Soviet republics, police threatened the reporters and the kidney sellers, ordering them not to continue, but the police had no legal grounds for the intimidation. Smith and Krasnolutska continued and completed their reporting. In Baku, Azerbaijan, Smith was alone with freelance photographer Diana Markosian, when police detained her in the airport with no justification and locked her up. Smith worked feverishly through the night to contact U.S. and Azerbaijan embassy officials to free Markosian. Police then deported her. Smith stayed in Baku for two weeks, followed by police, to find villagers who’d been forced to sell kidneys.
Results (if any).
Government officials and prosecutors in Latin America and Europe thanked Smith for the work and pledged to cooperate to prosecute the black market traffickers.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
The stories contained no factual errors, there were no corrections and no one challenged the accuracy of the stories.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
When reporting outside the U.S., don’t be intimidated by police or government officials who have no legitimate reason to threaten you. Be sure you have your passport and visa for each country in good order and be clear with embassies that you are a reporter requesting a visa because you’re working on a story.