Fraudulent adoptions in Mali: judicial investigation opened in Paris
A magistrate considered certain of the facts alleged against the association Le Rayon de soleil de l'enfant alien to be time-barred, but she agreed to investigate the offense of concealment of fraud.
A Parisian investigating judge has been investigating since mid-April the complaint of seven French people denouncing their adoption in Mali, organized according to them fraudulently by an authorized association, Agence France-presse (AFP) learned on Friday May 26 from a close source. folder. This complaint with the constitution of a civil party, after a first simple complaint filed by the Paris prosecutor's office, targets the association Le Rayon de soleil de l'enfant alien (RSEE), and a former local manager, Danielle Boudault, for acts, revealed by Le Monde , which allegedly occurred between 1989 and 1996, which concern children born in Mali between 1984 and 1993.
The complainants accuse the association and its former manager of having “duped the Malian biological parents (…) and the French adoptive parents” . After long procedural disputes, a Parisian magistrate ruled on April 17 that part of the alleged facts were time-barred, but she agreed to investigate the offense of concealment of fraud.
“There is no evidence to determine whether this offense is prescribed, insofar as the RSEE association is still active and it has not been established that the association has ceased to hold the funds paid by the French adoptive parents or that these funds have been reused for the benefit of third parties in good faith,” underlines the judge, according to an order of which AFP was aware. The plaintiffs, adopted children, “suffered harm by seeing their parentage disrupted and by being uprooted from their countries of origin ,” notes the judge.
" Let it go "
“The opening of this information constitutes a relief for the victims: after years of errors, French justice finally seems to take stock of the human and social consequences of neglecting international adoption ,” they declared to the AFP the plaintiffs' lawyers, Ms. Noémie Saidi-Cottier and Joseph Breham.
According to them, the system put in place by RSEE allowed full adoption in France, but which was only temporary on the Malian side, in accordance with a provision provided for in the law of this country under the name "adoption-protection" . The biological parents therefore thought that these adoptions would only last as long as their children were studying and that they would return to Mali afterwards. In other cases, the child was directly presented as abandoned to the Malian justice system, which declared their full adoption, subsequently confirmed by the French justice system.
Suspicions surrounding this association, another of its local branches and former collaborators of Danielle Boudault had already been relayed by the Malian media in 1993. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently withdrew its authorization from RSEE “due to of his past activities . The association confirmed on its site that it “will cease its international adoption activities on December 27, 2023” and that it contested this decision.