A 52-year-old teacher from Ukraine has been arrested for trying to sell a 13-year-old student to organ traffickers, who turned out to be undercover police.
Galina Kovalenko has been accused of plotting to sell the girl to pay off her debts.
The grandmother now faces up to 15 years in jail after trying to hand over the girl – a student at the boarding school for gifted children where she worked – to undercover police posing as organ traffickers.
Ukrainian interior minister Arsen Avakov said: “A teacher tried to sell a 13 year old girl for 10,000 USD. She is not human – she was caught but she stays calm. She tried to sell her student for 10,000 USD. She chose the buyer, negotiated the price. She suggested bringing the girl to a place fixed by the buyer and to put her into his car.”
Kovalenko lost her own daughter in a car crash and is married to an ex-policeman. She’d worked at the school for 6 years and had an unblemished 22-year teaching record.
She’s now being held in detention.
