HANOI - Laos is investigating a retired
justice ministry official for allegedly selling adopted babies to Americans,
Canadians and Australians for thousands of dollars each, a report said.
The official is accused of seeking out
unwanted babies in poor, rural areas, obtaining adoption papers and selling the
infants, all aged between one and two years, on to foreigners for up to
US$5,000 (S$6,235) each, according to Radio Free Asia.
He has been taken in for questioning and the
adoption process for children thought to be caught up in the scam has been
suspended pending the results of the investigation, RFA reported.
Mike Pryor, press officer at the US Embassy in
Laos, told AFP that Laos “suspended foreign adoptions on January 9” but did not
offer any specific reason for the move.
“Adopting a child for sale... is a crime
related to human trafficking, no question about it,” a government official told
RFA.
The justice ministry is probing how the scam
worked, including whether the birth parents sold their infants, which can
constitute a human trafficking offence punishable by a three-to-five-year jail
term, the official said.
It was not clear how many children were
involved in the alleged adoption ring.
The retired official was “familiar” with most
of the justice ministry’s employees and had often applied for adoption and
naturalisation papers, the report said.
Laos is listed as Tier 2 – out of three – in
the US State Department’s 2011 anti human trafficking report, which praises the
government’s “significant efforts” to combat the problem.
The US however said the government had “never
administratively or criminally punished any public official for complicity in
trafficking in persons”.
It said endemic corruption, a weak and
ineffective judiciary and a failure to investigate or prosecute local-level
officials suspected of involvement in trafficking were also key problems.
The Lao National Assembly approved a National
Plan of Action on human trafficking in 2007 but it has not been endorsed by the
prime minister’s office, the state department report adds.
AFP
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