“Intermediary” involved in child trafficking case released

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A 37-year-old woman accused of intermediating a notorious case of child trafficking and the illegal adoption of infants at an assisted reproduction clinic in Chania has been released from prison.

According to the local website zarpanews.gr, the defendant was released on bail of 10,000 euros and under strict restrictive conditions. The decision to release her from prison is based on social criteria, on serious medical need (the mother must be with her 2-year-old child).

The woman (the fourth accused in the case) was arrested at the airport on August 8, along with a nine-day-old baby and his biological mother, while they were traveling from Chania to Thessaloniki, with the intent give a child up for private adoption for a monetary reward.

She herself began collaborating with the clinic as an egg donor, and then took on the responsibilities of a “broker” with surrogate mothers, mainly from Romania, Moldova, etc.

In a recent telephone interview from prison with Spiegel magazine, the accused woman said that she, too, donated eggs to pay off a loan for her house and her eldest daughter’s education. “I was forced to sell my body because of poverty,” she emphasizes, describing her role in the clinic as secondary, arguing that “others made the big money.”

The indictment states that the woman, along with a 44-year-old woman from Chania, who is still in prison, had primary responsibility for supervision, transportation, accommodation and legal fees, and the provision of medications to surrogate mothers.

She also acted as a mediator, and the second engaged in concluding fictitious contracts, falsifying court cases etc. Their fee for each surrogate mother involved in the process started from 5000 euros + the monthly fee for their observation in court before childbirth from 300-600 euros.

According to ELAS, “The police departments for combating organized crime of Crete, in collaboration with their colleagues from the Katerini Security Sub-Directorate, managed to identify, among other things, an adoption case in Katerini. The “client” of the scammers admitted to the police that a Romanian midwife from the assisted reproduction center in Chania transported and delivered the baby to the city of Pieria prefecture.

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