Laos: Adoption Trafficking Investigation

Here's a news report about a retired official investigated for selling babies into international adoption:

Laos is investigating a retired justice ministry official for allegedly selling adopted babies to Americans, Canadians and Australians for thousands of dollars each, a report said.
The official is accused of seeking out unwanted babies in poor, rural areas, obtaining adoption papers and selling the infants, all aged between one and two years, on to foreigners for up to $5,000 each, according to Radio Free Asia.
He has been taken in for questioning and the adoption process for children thought to be caught up in the scam has been suspended pending the results of the investigation, RFA reported.
Mike Pryor, press officer at the US Embassy in Laos, told AFP that Laos "suspended foreign adoptions on January 9" but did not offer any specific reason for the move.

"Adopting a child for sale... is a crime related to human trafficking, no question about it," a government official told RFA.

The justice ministry is probing how the scam worked, including whether the birth parents sold their infants, which can constitute a human trafficking offence punishable by a three-to-five-year jail term, the official said.

It was not clear how many children were involved in the alleged adoption ring.

Laos is not a Hague Convention country. The number of children adopted from Laos to the U.S. is small:  6 in 2011, 7 in 2010, 8 in 2009. It would be interesting to know when this retired justice ministry official started working in adoptions -- there was a rather large jump in adoptions in 2009 -- the previous year there were 3, and then it jumped to 8. Though the numbers are small, that jump seems significant.

Another interesting quote from the article that caught my eye:

Laos is listed as Tier 2 -- out of three -- in the US State Department's 2011 anti human trafficking report. . . . The US however said the government had 'never administratively or criminally punished any public official for complicity in trafficking in persons.'

This incident, even if proven true, shouldn't be a ding against Laos in the 2012 anti-human-trafficking report, since our State Department doesn't consider buying babies for illegal adoption to be human trafficking.  Sheesh.