The court announced the first sentences to the participants of the surrogate motherhood scheme: details

The court issued a verdict for trafficking in children born through surrogate motherhood

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For the first time in Ukraine, the court issued a sentence for trafficking in children born through surrogate motherhood. Law enforcement officers exposed a criminal group of 12 people who were looking for single foreign men and offering them the services of Ukrainian surrogate mothers.

Three of them have already received suspended sentences because they admitted their guilt and cooperated with the investigation. The rest of the participants announced their suspicions, reported in the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office.

In a comment for “UP. Life”, the spokeswoman of the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office, Iryna Vynokurova, said that the criminal group had been operating since at least 2019. Its organizers are the heads of Kharkiv and Kyiv clinics, which provided relevant services.

“On foreign websites, members of the group posted ads offering single men from the EU surrogacy services in Ukrainian clinics. But according to current legislation, they can use them only spouses.

In this way, men came to Ukraine, signed a contract with them, and paid to a separate account. Everything looked supposedly legal. Interpreters, who were also part of the scheme, worked with foreigners.” – says Iryna Vynokurova.

According to her, the surrogate mothers were mainly women from the Kharkiv region, who had previously given birth to their own children, had financial difficulties and debts.

“They were convinced that by agreeing to surrogate motherhood, they would do a good deed both for themselves, because in this way they would solve their financial problems, and for the childless couple who dream of a child

That is, they did not know for whom they were giving birth, them did not warnthat these are single foreign men” – said the spokeswoman of the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office.

In addition, after the birth of the child, surrogate mothers had to register the child for themselves.

“According to the law, a child must have a father and a mother. But in this case, there is only the father. So women were forced to register the newborn child by various methods, including intimidation.

Then the woman gave permission to take the child abroad and the child and the father left the territory of Ukraine.” – explains Iryna Vynokurova.

Just during the registration of the child, an employee of one of the RACs discovered a criminal scheme.

“The mother and father came to register the baby. The employee looked at the foreigner’s passport and found that the period of the husband’s stay in Ukraine did not coincide with the pregnancy. Therefore, the woman admitted that she was a surrogate mother. Then the police were called.” – notes Iryna Vynokurova.

As reported by the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office, it is known about 10 children who were born to surrogate mothers. However, there may be more of them.

So far, only three members of the group have been sentenced – the administrators of the clinic and the lawyer who helped with the registration of the children. They were charged in the recruitment of people for the purpose of exploitation using deception and the vulnerable state of the victims, committed repeatedly as part of a criminal organization – part 2 of article 255, part 4 of article 28, part 3 of article 149 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

“Taking into account cooperation with the investigation, the Obolon and Podilsky courts of the city of Kyiv sentenced them to 5 years of imprisonment with a probation period of 3 years”, – the message says.

The prosecutor’s office also added that other participants face imprisonment. Punishment will depend on the “role” they played in the group. The pre-trial investigation is still ongoing.