By Sheila Flynn and Gerard Couzens
with Daily Mail
Seven Mexican babies have been seized from Irish couples after police in Guadalajara smashed an international child-smuggling ring. Officials said the couples believed they were following proper adoption channels but that the babies were actually being sold by their mothers. Up to 11 Irish families were being questioned this weekend in connection with the scam, centred in the Guadalajara region of central Mexico, where four local women have been arrested.
The Irish couples, all of whom remained unnamed yesterday, were shocked and heartbroken to be told of the scam and to have to return the infants.
‘Some of them had the babies we’ve rescued with them because they were told that living with them was part of the process they needed to go through to adopt these youngsters,’ State Attorney Tomas Coronado Olmos said.
‘We have rescued nine babies in total, boys and girls. Two were removed from one of the women we arrested and another seven from the custody of foreign couples.
‘They are currently in state care,’ Mr Coronado Olmos added. ‘One is two years old and the rest are aged between two and eight months.’
Officials are thought to have uncovered the scam after arresting a 21-year-old Mexican woman in the town of Zapopan, about 10km northeast of Guadalajara, as she allegedly tried to sell one of her children for €1,000. The woman’s sister-in-law is thought to have reported her to the authorities.
Three Mexican women, all aged in their early 30s, were subsequently arrested on suspicion of belonging to a child-trafficking gang. They are suspected of using newspaper advertisements to find expectant mothers who did not want to keep their babies – then buying the infants from the women and handing them over to wealthy foreign couples who travelled to Mexico seeking to adopt.
The Irish couples were reportedly given the babies at a hotel in Guadalajara and sent to the nearby town of Ajijic, a popular retirement destination for Canadian and American expats, to spend a fortnight with the babies while adoption papers were processed. The processing was done in the neighbouring state of Colima. It is not clear whether suspected gang members intended faking documents or had corrupt local officials in their pay. The birth mothers are said to have been paid €70 a week plus medical expenses while they were pregnant.
One local paper reported that after the mothers gave birth, the child-trafficking suspects got them to sign a contract permitting them to ‘hire’ their babies for €30 a day over a fortnight for use in photoshoots for publicity contracts. Instead, the babies were handed over to the foreign couples and the birth mothers were given a copy of the contract, which they used to justify their babies’ absence to friends and neighbours. Mexican authorities said the Guadalajara-based firm Lopez & Lopez Associates was involved in drawing up those contracts. It is not clear whether the mothers knew their babies would be given up permanently or whether they expected them back after the fortnight.
Mexican lawyer Carlos Lopez has been arranging private adoptions in Mexico for Irish couples for at least seven years. He has been pictured in albums with other families who travelled from Ireland to adopt and is listed on various adoption websites. When the Irish Mail on Sunday called a number for his office, the number did not exist. Local sources said Lopez was facing child-trafficking charges and was now on the run. Officials have not ruled out further arrests. Investigators believe the prospective new parents were sent to Ajijic so they could blend in with the thousands of foreigners who have made the popular holiday town, on the shores of Lake Chapala, their home. Irish couples have been travelling to the resort town for years, mainly staying in the gated communities of La Floresta and El Parque. One woman, who has helped to arranged accommodation for Irish families in the past, said they stay anywhere from three to eight months to comply with Mexican government guidelines on adoption.
‘The women stay and the husbands often go back to Ireland to work,’ she said. As the arrests and investigation unfolded during the past few days, Ireland’s Adoption Authority issued a release on Thursday about intercountry adoptions involving Mexico. The Mexican authorities stated that all documentation must be sent by the ‘Adoption Authority of Ireland, or a body accredited by the AAI, to the Federal Central Authority’ – as per the Mexican notice on the Hague Convention website.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk
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