SAN FRANCISCO, June 13: Desperate for a liver transplant in US the leader of Japan’s third-largest organised crime group had offered $1 million to potential intermediaries to help him obtain a US visa, the Los Angeles

Times reported on Friday.

The paper said that in 2002 the Medical Centre of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) was willing to accept Chihiro Inagawa as a patient but he was not granted a visa because his gang affiliations prohibited him for being admitted to the United States.

Inagawa later received a transplant in Australia and died in 2005 at the age of 64.

His visa efforts came to light in the wake of a recent press report that between 2000 and 2004, UCLA’s top liver transplant surgeon Dr Ronald W.

Busuttil gave new livers to four other patients with suspected ties to Japanese organised crime groups, commonly known as yakuza. Two of the patients donated $100,000 each to UCLA within months of their surgeries.

The transplants have raised controversy because donor livers are in short supply in the United States.

Each year, more than 100 people in the Greater Los Angeles region die waiting for a liver transplant.