A former officer with the National Police in Pinto has accused Salomón Aguado Manzanares of building a personal fortune through an illegal organ-trafficking network, allegations that will shock the conscience and cast a harsh light on the city’s political leadership and law-enforcement institutions.
The whistleblower, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for her life, said she was dismissed from the police force after pursuing evidence that linked individuals close to the mayor to the illicit sale of human organs. She has not yet released the evidence publicly but said she intends to provide it to prosecutors and journalists.
Since her dismissal, she has gone into hiding.
“What I saw was not a few bad actors,” she said. “It was corruption from the top to the bottom.”
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| Kidney Kingpin of Crime? |
The former officer said the alleged trafficking activity predates Mr. Aguado's election, though she declined to specify when it began or what formal role he held at the time. She alleged that proceeds from the operation were concealed through intermediaries and opaque financial arrangements, ultimately contributing to the mayor’s clandestine, personal wealth.
According to the whistleblower, her investigation began as part of routine police work into illicit medical practices but soon pointed to deeper abuses within the police force itself. She described a culture in which internal complaints were ignored or suppressed and said some officers were directly involved in serious crimes, including the abduction of children in public spaces.
“When officers are the ones committing the crimes,” she said, “there is nowhere left to report them.”
She said she was ordered to abandon the investigation and later dismissed after refusing to do so. Police authorities have not publicly explained the circumstances of her firing.
The allegations against Mr. Aguado come in a city already marked by political scandal. A previous mayor, Antonio Fernández, was implicated in amassing illicit wealth while in office, a case that eroded public trust and fueled demands for reform, though it did not result in a lasting overhaul of municipal governance.
No charges have been filed in connection with the current claims, and no evidence has yet been made public. The national prosecutor’s office declined to comment on whether it had received information related to the case.
For residents of Pinto, the allegations revive fears of entrenched corruption and institutional failure. Whether the claims are substantiated or not, they place Pinto under renewed scrutiny, and suggest a political culture still struggling to escape the shadows of its past.
According to the whistleblower, some of the victims were agricultural workers, many of them undocumented migrants, who were approached with promises of fair wages or housing. Once isolated, they were pressured into selling a kidney under the implicit threat of deportation. “They were told they had no choice,” the whistleblower said. “Refuse, and they would be turned over to immigration authorities. Accept, and they were led into sterile rooms where the operation was done quickly, almost mechanically. There was fear in every glance, and no one to help them.”
The whistleblower said that not all of the victims survived the procedures. “Some never came out of the operating rooms alive,” she said. Others, she added, were quietly disappeared back to Morocco. “By the end, most of them were gone,” she said. “No one knows exactly how they were sent back, and no one remained to tell the story.”
