Russian investigators verifying info on illegal swaps of Russian children in US

Russia’s Investigative Committee is doing a pre-investigation checking of the data on the illegal swaps and transfers of Russian orphaned children by adoptive families in the US, Pavel Astakhov, President Putin’s ombudsman for the rights of children told a news conference Wednesday. He discussed the situation with the Chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin the previous day. “A recent investigation done by American reporters exposed entire communities of adoptive parents who not engage in the upbringing of their adopted kids and offer them for re-adoption,” Astakhov said. “This issue is being considered at present by the Investigations Committee and Alexander Bastrykin and I discussed the situation yesterday.” “A pre-investigation inspection of the data was launched at his personal request,” he said. Astakhov said the Investigative Committee might institute a criminal case if it was proved that criminal offenses against children had been committed, for instance, the offenses against the sexual immunity of Russian children or physical violence towards them. He said nothing is known today about a thousand of Russian children adopted by the Americans. They simply vanished out of sight of Russian state agencies that supervise the adoption procedures. Journalists working for Reuters did an inquiry into the activity of a clandestine network involved in the exchanges of adopted children in the US. They established the presence of several Internet forums where announcements about overburdening children and requests for re-adoptions were placed. These children mostly came from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, African countries, and China and most of them were in the age of six to fourteen years old. The news agency published the results of investigation at its official website.