MOSCOW - Adoption of Russian children by foreigners has turned out to be a profitable business recently, Russian Deputy General Prosecutor Vladimir Kolesnikov declared at the round table meeting Laws on Adoption: Practices and Ways to Improve Them, which was held in the Russian State Duma yesterday.

According to him, the Russian General Prosecutor's Office is receiving complaints filed by foreigners that they are requested to pay enormous amounts of money so as to adopt a Russian child.

“Despite the fact that adoption is free of charge in Russia, foreigners are sometimes requested to pay up to $50,000 to adopt a child; this process is developing into a business,” Mr. Kolesnikov pointed out. According to him, it is necessary to solve this problem by signing bilateral international agreements on providing help in civil and domestic proceedings. In addition, Mr. Kolesnikov is sure that it is necessary to control child welfare agencies.

Moreover, Mr. Kolesnikov expressed his discontent about how Russian child welfare agencies work. “The General Prosecutor's Office shares the Duma’s concerns about the level of homelessness among children as well as an increase in the number of orphans and draws attention to the inefficiency of the work of child welfare agencies,” Mr. Kolesnikov underlined. According to the Deputy General Prosecutor, the measures that are being taken are not enough to change the situation.

In particular, the work of separate state agencies and officials negatively affects the accommodation and adoption of orphans. “Requirements of the Family Code concerning identifying children who become orphans are generally not met,” Mr. Kolesnikov stressed. In some regions, there is no information exchange between regional and federal databases, and as a result, many children cannot be adopted.

“Child welfare agencies do not take the necessary measures to have children adopted by Russian families; it has become known that certain child welfare agencies’ have mercenary motives while allowing Russian children to be adopted by foreigners,” Mr. Kolesnikov said. According to him, all these violations resulted in the fact that in 2003, the number of adoptions of Russian children made by foreigners exceeded that made by Russians for the first time.

Practices and statistics show that the adoption of orphans “has been orientated towards foreigners” over the past few years. In particular, more than 45,000 children have been taken abroad for adoption over the past 10 years. This process was the most dynamic in the years 2001 to 2003. This data was presented by Nikolay Pershutkin, the Deputy head for the Public Security Service of the Russian Interior Ministry.

“The absence of clear legal requirements in this sphere impedes controlling this process as it is required by the situation and the interests of adopted Russian children,” the representative of the Interior Ministry reported. In particular, according to him, among the most vexing problems is “independent adoption,” when a considerable number of Russian children are taken abroad by so-called “independent adopters,” whose legal status corresponds to the rights of Russian citizens. As such, simplified procedures for registration of parental rights apply to them.

“Last year, 2,500 children were taken abroad to this category of foreigners and nobody knows the fate of a majority of them,” Mr. Pershutkin added. According to him, law enforcement agencies need tough legal regulations to control these activities and to impede these unlawful actions.

Meanwhile, the number of Russian children adopted by foreigners has increased by 5 times over the past 10 years, Yekaterina Lyakhova, the Chairwoman of the Duma Committee on Women, Family and Young People, declared.

Foreigners adopted 5,500 children in 1998 and about 8,000 children in 2003. This figure will reach 10,000 this year, Lyakhova said having underlined that primarily healthy children were leaving Russia. The proportion of disabled children taken abroad for adoption amounts to about 2.5 percent.

Under the guise of adoption, the real trade of children is hidden. Citizens of the USA, Canada and Italy adopt children very often, Lyakhova said. She also stressed that foreigners were given priority over Russian citizens when adoption issues were settled.