Police in eastern Ukraine have detained a teacher accused of attempting to offer a 13-year-old girl for $10,000 (£8,035).
The girl was living at a boarding school in the Kharkiv region for kids and orphans from broken homes.
The instance was reported by Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov on Facebook, with photos of the 52-year-old teacher and girl. He said police were monitoring them.
Mr Avakov said the buyer suggested that the girl’s organs will be taken off.
The buyer inquired concerning the girl’s well-being and paid the teacher 1,000 hryvnia (£31; $39) for pictures of the girl and her medical records, Mr Avakov said.
Ukrainian media have identified the defendant as Galina Kovalenko. She teaches literature, and the Ukrainian and Russian languages, and has more than 20 years’ teaching experience, they report.
There has been no statement in the teacher.
Mr Avakov said “Galina [Kovalenko] worked for almost per year on her ‘business plan’ for selling the 13-year old girl”, whom she’d singled out as vulnerable.
The teacher may be jailed for up to 12 years, if found guilty. Mr Avakov is handling the case.
There have been previous reports of criminal gangs preying on destitute men and women in eastern Europe to harvest their organs. The commerce in organs may be highly rewarding.
In 2013, an EU-led court in Kosovo found five individuals guilty in connection using a human organ-trafficking ring. The five were accused of carrying out heaps of transplants that were illegal in the capital, Pristina at the Medicus Clinic.
