The authorities had information about the “production and sale” of children in Prague. But they did nothing
Three years ago, Czech detectives for a case they had not yet had: “Sale” of children that surrogate mothers, poor Ukrainians, took to order to foreign customers.
The list of Wednesday reports extensively described the conclusions of this business: Foreigners, exclusively homosexual couples or single men, thus buy children in Prague completely out of the control of authorities or courts.
At the very beginning of the investigation, detectives invited a consultant to help them with legal issues. The police promised expert opinions from the director of the Office for the International Legal Protection of Children, Zdeněk Kapitán, on how Czech law remembers surrogacy. That is, a situation where a foreign woman takes away the embryo of biological parents who cannot have offspring in the usual way.
However, the cooperation ended in failure. “No document and then he completely stopped communicating with us,” described state prosecutor Martina Adámková, who oversees the case.
Today, Zdeněk Kapitán says that he has long been “calling” for surrogacy to be bound by clear paragraphs. And precisely because it does not have Czech law regulated, it “seduces to various iniquities”, as the director of the Office for International Legal Protection stated on the phone.
Zdeněk Kapitán asked further questions about the case by e-mail and then admitted in his written answers that his office actually had information from the registries that the described child trafficking could take place.
He no longer answered questions and what he did for the creation of a special law and what his “call” for the rules looks like.
This attitude is eloquent. Even other Czech authorities have not solved the problem of surrogacy in the long run. And although police turned to several state institutions during the investigation to give surrogacy rules, it remained unanswered.
What the cops found out
Czech detectives, together with colleagues in Ukraine, Great Britain and Sweden, documented three dozen cases of children “sold” through Prague to Norway, Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, the United States or China. No child has been confirmed, for example, to be abused or to use pornography, for example. however, there is a lack of control over who buys children in this way and how the children are doing. The coronavirus also affected the fate of the children: Due to the closed borders in 2020, two children remained in the Czech Republic for over a year before their fathers could come for them.
According to investigators, people from Professor Alexander Feskov’s clinic in Kharkov, Ukraine, earned a total of 1.2 million euros in this way.
Detectives have addressed the Ministry of Health, for example, which now claims that surrogacy and child trafficking do not fall within its remit. That this is a problem for the Ministry of Justice or for the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, which, by the way, the police also approached in order to remedy it.
However, at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, they refer to the Ministry of the Interior with the Act on Surrogacy…
“Nevertheless, we will raise this issue in our inter-ministerial negotiations and we will certainly push for a legislative solution to be found as soon as possible and for similar cases not to occur at all in the future,” explained Minister Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL).
In investigating the child trafficking, detectives charted how fathers from around the world ordered “turnkey” infants at the Alexander Feskov Clinic in Kharkov, Ukraine. It’s a simple and pretty quick way: Fathers send their sperm, the clinic selects a suitable anonymous egg donor from its database and provides a surrogate mother to take the child for $ 10,000.
The surrogate mother then travels to Prague, which according to criminalists is the logistics center of the entire business. The Kharkov Clinic in Prague will ensure the delivery and settlement of all official requirements. And then the foreign father takes the infant home. It costs him around 60,000 euros.
According to the police, the further fate of the children is completely beyond the control of the authorities or courts, which, for example, check the adoption of a new parent.
Or: On the Ukraine-Prague route, there is no guarantee that a child will not buy a pedophile or a completely immature person to take care of a newborn. After all, Czech police officers came across a case in an international investigation where the father actually lost interest in the child. And also to the fact that one of the children has disappeared in the United States and even the detectives there are not on his trail yet.
The Ukrainian police are already prosecuting six people for human trafficking in the case. The mentioned Kharkiv clinic also circumvents Ukrainian laws, which prohibit this method of surrogacy. It is only allowed for spouses who have been trying in vain for a child for years. Not for same-sex couples or singles.
In the Czech Republic, due to the lack of legal regulation by the police, to ensure that mapped trafficking in children is dangerous and should be avoided.
“It is not possible for a child to really be just a commodity that can be bought if I have enough money. The conclusion is unacceptable from our point of view that if the country has absolutely precisely defined conditions for the application of surrogacy, this is simply possible by sending the mother to the Czech Republic, “said Jaroslav Ibehej, spokesman for the National Center against Organized Crime ( NCOZ), whose investigators are working on the case.
Lawyer Marek Eichler, who represents Ukrainian Professor Feskov in the Czech Republic, denied that the Ukrainian doctor had done anything illegal.
“The fact that the police or the Czech authorities have some ethical or moral problems with the matter does not in itself mean that the operation of surrogacy is illegal. Surrogacy is the only way for many people or couples to have children, so it is quite logical that this method is becoming popular, when there are a number of countries in which surrogacy is not a criminal or legal period, “said the lawyer. Eichler.
Daniela Kovářová (for the ODS) opened the topic of surrogacy for the first time in 2009 at the then Ministry of Justice. She talked about the need to pass the law on surrogacy due to the parents. Because it can happen that the surrogate mother gives birth to the child, but she refuses to give it up.
Kovářová also proposed resolving the remuneration for a surrogate mother – according to Czech law, it must not become the subject of trade, so surrogate mothers can now only legally receive compensation for their services for demonstrably incurred costs.