Kinderhandel: EU officials betrokken bij mensenhandel maffia.
Kinderhandel: EU officials betrokken bij mensenhandel maffia.
Bought children in Congo: European officials supported human trafficking mafia.
Buying people in Africa, cash for children from the Congo – the “adoptive parents” in Europe paid up to 40,000 euros, including even lawyers. The journalist Aurora Weiss, UN Global Reporter, reports exclusively for the eXXpress on the unbelievable scandal.
April 14, 2023 21:20
After months of silence, Dickson Matembo, undersecretary at the Zambian ministry, confirmed the information for the first time: Eight Croatians arrested in Zambia last December for attempted child trafficking used travel documents obtained thanks to forged adoption documents.
It is also confirmed that the owner of the children's home is on the run. Zambia wants to return the children, who are now “officially Croatian citizens”, to their homeland of DR Congo.
The case is pending
The case came to light in December 2022 after immigration officers at Ndola Airport arrested eight Croatian nationals on suspicion of child trafficking and falsifying documents. First of all, the validity of the documents on the adoption of minor children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was questionable because international adoptions from there have been completely banned since 2017.
The suspects have since been formally arrested and charged with attempted child trafficking; the case is pending before the DR Congo Supreme Court. Gauthier Luyela, head of the child protection department at the country's Ministry for Equality, Family and Children, dismisses claims that Croatian families have been granted special permission for adoption by the courts. "No intercountry adoptions can be inspected" before a new state agency to oversee foreign adoptions is established under the law.
Broke the silence: Dickson Matembo
39 children from Congo disappeared without a trace in Europe
It is difficult to determine over how many children have been so purchased. In the past decade, courts have confirmed 83 adoptions from DR Congo, the Interior Ministry has issued documents for 94 children – and Minister for Social Affairs and Family Marin Pileti? believes 131 children have been adopted from DR Congo.
Those numbers don't add up at all. As the journalist Aurora Weiss learned from confidential sources, 39 children who were supposed to be living with Croatian families have disappeared without a trace. People who are in close contact with the “adoptive parents” claim that these are not fraudulent adoptions, even though the “adoptive parents” were well aware that the process was going through questionable channels. The official documents did not come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but, as the research showed, via DHL deliveries. No official has ever checked these for authenticity.
Children from Africa are adopted through "questionable channels". Icon image: AFP
Children from 15,000 euros
No one has really checked who the people who adopt children are and who the children who have been adopted are. Aurora Weiss has found that most of the families who have carried out these still questionable adoptions are lawyers or high-ranking private sector employees. The prices they paid for the children also varied, from 15 to 40 thousand euros, depending on how highly the “intermediaries” valued the “adoptive parents”. Explosive: Neither Interpol nor Europol were entrusted with investigations.
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