Five members of the medical profession will appear in the Durban Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday on charges related to trading in human kidneys, The Mercury website reported.
It said prominent professors who specialise in transplant operations are believed to be among the five.
Four other people were earlier arrested in connection with the scam.
They are Durban kidney specialist Jeff Kallmeyer, Netcare transplant unit employees Lindsay Dickson and Melanie Azor and Hebrew/English interpreter Samuel Ziegler.
The activities of the alleged international syndicate were uncovered by detectives from Durban’s Commercial Branch who probed hundreds of kidney transplant operations.
These were performed at Durban’s St Augustine’s Hospital and other Netcare hospitals in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
The syndicate allegedly recruited poor Brazilians who were flown to South Africa and paid a few hundred dollars for their healthy kidneys.
Apparently, the recipients were mainly Israelis who paid up to $120 000 (about R720 000) for ”transplant holidays”.
False documents were allegedly produced, indicating that the donors and recipients were blood relatives and that no money changed hands.
Detectives had travelled to Brazil and Israel to get statements from donors and recipients.
Some of those involved stood trial in their own countries and received prison sentences.
In Brazil, most of the donors were acquitted after the court found that they had been victims of the syndicate and had not been told that what they were doing was illegal.
In South Africa, three people have already pleaded guilty to crimes under the Human Tissues Act.
The Durban ”co-ordinator” of the syndicate, Roderick Kimberly, had admitted to organising 38 operations at St Augustine’s hospital.
The Mercury said it had been estimated that as many as 110 illegal transplant operations were carried out in Durban.
A trial date was expected to be set for next year in Durban’s Commercial Crime Court. – Sapa