Galery

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Law enforcers of the Attica region, in collaboration with the Euboea Police Directorate have raided a criminal group involved in illicit infant adoptions.

Six Bulgarians were arrested in Athens, 3 of which are members of the group: a 30-year-old woman and two men, aged 36 and 57. The other three are the babies’ parents: two women aged 26 and 36 and a 33-year-old man. A lawyer aged 62 and a woman of 55, a Bulgarian citizen, are being sought for involvement with the criminal group.

A case was brought against them for setting up and running a criminal organisation, as well as infringements of the adoption and the immigration laws.

As the investigation has ascertained, the three group members in custody, along with the two accomplices now sought by the police, had set up a criminal group. They targeted financially challenged women of Bulgarian origin, whether in Bulgaria or in Greece, and provided mediation for the illicit adoptions of their newborns against a fee ranging from €3000-€10,000.

Group members had different roles. Some were in charge of finding women or couples who were willing to give up their children for adoption; they even targeted women who would become pregnant and sell their newborns. Other members were responsible for accommodating women or couples whose children would be subject to adoptions. A 62-year-old Greek lawyer carried out the vetting of mothers and babies and tackled all legal hurdles surrounding the adoptions.

The police said that ojn Tuesday morning, in the region of Agios Panteleimonas, the 30-year-old woman and the 36-year-old man received from another Bulgarian woman a newborn whom they had handed over to an unknown Greek couple.

Thereafter, they went over to Kypseli, to the house where the 26-year-old arrested woman had lived, and received her baby to be adopted as agreed, but they were apprehended there. The aforementioned young woman had been found in Bulgaria by the 57-year-old man and 55-year-old woman who had proposed to her that she get pregnant and sell her baby for adoption in Greece for €3,000.

The police search of the place in Agios Panteleimonas where the 30-year-old woman and the 36-year-old man had resided led to the discovery of another couple, a 33-year-old man and a woman of 36, along with a baby whom the latter had given birth to several days earlier in Chalkida hospital. She was planning to give it up for adoption, along with another young child.

The police confiscated from the arrested or took from the places where they lived a passport, an identity card and a driving licence of a third individual, which had been used by the 36-year-old man, a bank deposit card, adoption documents and a number of handwritten notes, five mobile phones and €340 in cash.

The 36-year-old man had been given by Chalkida regional court an 18 months jail sentence for grievous bodily harm.

After being provided with the proper care, the two newborns and the third child were taken to hospital to be examined. The arrested group will face the prosecutor.