Police have cracked a multi-billion-shilling syndicate run by a daughter of a former powerful Nairobi politician and her husband which is involved in trafficking Kenyan children to Eastern Europe for suspected organ harvesting and use as guinea pigs.
The intricate network with deep tentacles in State organs includes the Judiciary with two magistrates and a lawyer working to expedite the adoption of the children – the National Police Service and Immigration department where officers are paid to facilitate the illegal trade.
In the investigation that has taken months to piece together crucial evidence, the police, who are at the tail end of the delicate and sensitive probe, will as soon as early this week pounce on the culprits — the politician’s daughter and her husband, two magistrates, two police officers, an Immigration officer and owner of a children’s home in Nairobi.
The syndicate is paid between Sh10 million and Sh15 million for every child taken to Europe as a guinea pig for medical experiments.
Kenya has often been pointed as one of the key origin and transit centres of the lucrative global criminal syndicate with children from poor homes being the major victims. They are trafficked to European nations where they are used for medical experiments while some land in the hands of unscrupulous and vicious cartels who harvest their organs for sale in the black market.
The cartel has been thriving despite a moratorium on inter-country child adoption in 2014, following reports that adoption agencies and unscrupulous children’s homes were trafficking the minors under the guise of helping them get a better life aboard.
The moratorium was to help the government conduct a comprehensive audit of the claims by a seven-member team appointed to scrutinise the process.