Indonesian officials investigating the adoption of Irish toddler Tristan Dowse have arrested two people they believe are members of a syndicate which allegedly sold him and 80 other infants to foreigners during the last five years, the country's social services minister Bachtiar Syamsah said yesterday.
Social services are now convinced Tristan's adoptive parents, Irish man Joe Dowse and his Azerbaijani wife, Lala, acquired their son illegally, ministry official and investigator Mr Afrinaldi told The Irish Times.
The couple face up to five years in prison and 100 million rupiah (€8,475) in fines if they return to Indonesia, he said.
Tristan, who turns four this week, is still in legal limbo as he remains an Irish citizen. He has been moved from the Emmanuel orphanage, where he was left by the Dowses in 2003, to a government-run institution where he is undergoing psychological evaluation.
Mr Bachtiar said two members of the baby-trafficking ring were arrested on July 25th and two others, including an Indonesian-American woman, are still at large.
"They would approach pregnant women in poor areas and persuade them to give up their children," the minister said. "They told them there is no need to be sad because your kid will be raised by wealthy foreign couples."
The foreigners would pay for the delivery expenses as part of the deal, Mr Bachtiar said.
Tristan's mother, Suryani, had been abandoned by her husband and was caring for two other children when approached by the women, according to a letter she wrote to the south Jakarta court to support the Dowses' adoption.
Mr Afrinaldi, who said he posed as a buyer in order to expose the syndicate, said the women paid mothers like Suryani up to 500,000 rupiah (€42.40) for their children and then sold them on for many times that figure.
"When I posed as a businessman wanting to buy a child, I was told it would cost about 15 million rupiah to get a court to approve the adoption and up to 50 million to get a passport," he said.
Mr Afrinaldi said one of the women told him the gang had sold 80 babies since it began operating in 2000.
The nationalities of the foreigners who bought the infants are not known yet.
Eight children, court documents, receipts and false birth certificates were among the evidence seized from the women. The children are now being cared for by social services.
Police are investigating court officials who were involved in the decisions to legalise the adoptions without approval from the social affairs ministry.
The social services official said he had no idea when Tristan might be adopted.
"He has clearly been traumatised by the whole experience and will need time to recover," he said. "We have people, both local and foreign, interested in adopting him but it is still not the appropriate time."