Guatemalan police rescue 46 children from adoption scam

GUATEMALA CITY (AFP) - Guatemalan police rescued 46 children aged between three days and two years old, who were victims of the country's booming illegal adoption racket, officials said on Monday.

The children, who did not have proper documentation for adoption, were discovered by police on Saturday during a raid on a clandestine orphanage in the tourist area of Old Guatemala.

Lawyers Vilma Zamora, 34, and Sandra Lopez, 42, were arrested in connection with allegedly working on illegal adoption procedures involving the children.
The youths have been transferred to police custody while homes are found for them, said prosecutor general spokesman Carlos Azurdia.
"The juvenile court is aware of the case and some details must be arranged so the children can be transferred to legal homes," Azurdia told AFP.

The children, 23 boys and 23 girls, were found in a home in Kiriva, 47 kilometers (29 miles) from Guatemala City.
Although authorities found paperwork that indicated family members had given the children up for adoption, the papers had not passed through the juvenile court which "is the correct path for every adoption process," Azurdia said.

The daily newspaper La Prensa, which first reported the scandal, quoted a worker at the orphanage as saying that its owner, the husband of Lopez, lives in the United States.
According to the legal process, a court must determine whether any biological relatives would be willing to take charge of a child before setting the child on a path toward national, or international, adoption.

"That way it is a matter of avoiding having economic interest prevail over the welfare of children," Azurdia said.
Guatemala has lax adoption laws, which have given rise to a thriving international adoption business worth an estimated 200 million dollars a year.

Nearly 4,500 children were adopted in Guatemala last year, up 10 percent from 2005, according to the prosecutor general's office. Ninety-eight percent of them ended up in the hands of foreign, mainly US, couples.

The US State Department has said the adoption process in Guatemala is rife with "conflicts of interest" and "improper financial gain."
One state investigator said people would pay 50,000 dollars to adopt a child from Guatemala, where most people live in poverty.

Last month, angry indigenous residents of the El Paraiso village in northern Guatemala who were convinced of a kidnapping ring in their midst seized 15 captives who they feared were plotting to snatch children for international adoptions.

Several villages in majority indigenous Guatemala have detained people for the same fears.
The vigilante-style justice and isolated attacks have killed at least seven people, left at least four police stations burned to the ground and injured another dozen people.