‘Cash-for-corpses’ scheme stuns Poland

It is known among Polish ambulance crews as ‘‘skin hunting’’ - the practice of taking bribes from funeral homes in exchange for steering corpses their way.

Now, police are investigating allegations that some crews in Lodz, Poland’s second-largest city, went a grotesque step further, deliberately letting very sick patients die before reaching hospitals - and even administering fatal drug doses - to boost business.

There have been no charges in any deaths - only arrests on suspicion of bribery. But police in Lodz say there is growing evidence to support allegations in an investigative report late last month in Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s biggest newspaper.

‘‘We are all shocked by these crimes that are hard to imagine,’’ Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski said of the report.

The scandal has been making headlines across Poland ever since, and police in Lodz say they are following up on hundreds of tips phoned in on a hot line - and preparing to exhume bodies.

Police would not discuss details of the investigation, but said they have arrested nine people over the past two weeks and that the probe is widening. Authorities in a dozen cities are investigating similar allegations, but the reported abuses in Lodz are the most serious.

‘‘It’s terrible, it’s awful, it’s simply unimaginable,’’ said Anna Starzynska, 65, a retired shop worker waiting at a bus stop near the city’s main ambulance centre. ‘‘You look at that building, and you ask yourself: Do those people working there really come to your home to help you?’’

State ambulance service officials acknowledge that the system is ripe for corruption. They blame notoriously low pay for government-employed medical workers and a lack of laws regulating intense competition among funeral homes for state-paid funerals.

‘‘If there is a demand for something, somebody will supply it sooner or later,’’ said Boguslaw Tyka, head of the Lodz provincial ambulance service. ‘‘The bodies are a kind of goods here that funeral homes want to buy. No laws or permit requirements or anything prevent them from competing to get the information about the deaths.’’

In a typical skin-hunting deal, a funeral parlour that has been tipped off shows up within minutes to take away the body. Most bereaved relatives then find it convenient to authorise the same one to handle funeral arrangements - and receive the standard state payment of around £700 to cover costs.

If relatives want to use a different funeral home, they must pay to get the body there and pay the original home for its brief services.

Polish media reports say ambulance crews that tip off funeral homes get kickbacks of around £140 (€227) per corpse, nearly a third the monthly salary of a typical Lodz ambulance doctor.

But low salaries in public services are hardly rare in Poland and the reports have provoked outrage among other workers.

‘‘I’m a teacher, and I’m also paid very little, but I would never do something that breaks all ethical norms,’’ said Janina Solska, a Lodz resident. ‘‘It’s a rat race. It’s all about money.’’

Leaders in Poland’s influential Roman Catholic Church also cite the scandal as evidence that traditional values have become corrupted by rampant capitalism.

‘‘It’s widely suggested now that value number one is money, that only money gives happiness, and that everything else, such as human dignity, honour, professionalism, is inferior to getting richer,’’ Bishop Adam Lepa said in the daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita.

Despite the allegations, officials say there has been no drop in calls for ambulances. Some people even say they appreciate cooperation between ambulance crews and funeral homes, given the lack of state morgues, coroners and clear regulations on how to handle corpses.

‘‘My uncle I was living with died in the middle of the night. I wouldn’t have known what to do if the ambulance crew hadn’t taken his body to a funeral home,’’ Zbigniew Bartek, a taxi driver.

‘‘I think it’s good that ambulance crews give you information about funeral homes - as long as they don’t murder patients, of course.’’