A Chinese orphanage director and nine other people have been sentenced to prison for buying and selling scores of infants who were adopted by foreign parents, the government announced today.
Another 22 officials were fired in the case in the southern city of Hengyang in Hunan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Police said the traffickers bought babies that had been abducted from their families and sold them to welfare homes in Hengyang for 3,200 to 4,300 yuan each, the report said.
"The social welfare homes then had the infants adopted by foreigners who made donations," the report said.
It did not give the nationalities of adoptive parents or say whether they were considered to have bought the babies.
The group carried on the trade from 2002 to 2005, and trafficked 78 babies in 2005 alone, Xinhua said.
AP