Organ broker dinged in Shenyang

BEIJING (Kyodo) A court in Shenyang, China, sentenced a 52-year-old Japanese businessman Thursday to 14 months in jail for falsely advertising his organ transplant business, according to the Japanese Consulate General there.

Hiroyuki Nagase, head of IPC Information Service Co. based in Shenyang, was detained in September 2007 in connection with illegal organ transplants.

Nagase's company had been brokering organ transplants to Japanese patients since 2004 under the name China International Organ Transplant Support Center. In its ruling, the court said Nagase overstated in advertisements the number of transplants his organization brokered.