Five charged for running surrogacy agency illegally

PHNOM PENH: A Chinese man and four Cambodians were charged by a Cambodian court under the country’s anti-human trafficking law for allegedly running an illegal commercial surrogacy agency, local media reported.

Liu Qiang, a 49-year-old Chinese national, and the four Cambodians were charged on Monday with the act of buying, selling or exchanging a person for cross-border transfer, as well as with being [a] surrogacy intermediary, the Khmer Times reported yesterday.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of eight years in prison.

The suspects were arrested last week in a police raid at two villas in the capital Phnom Penh.

Liu was reportedly the ringleader of the operation, which promised to pay poor village women US$10,000 (RM40,119) each to carry babies for other people that could be sent to China.

More than 30 pregnant Cambodian women were also swept up in the investigation, said Chou Bun Eng, vice-chair of the national committee to combat human trafficking.

“What we are doing is [trying] to protect the victims. Who are the victims? It’s the baby in the womb,” Bun Eng said.

Surrogacy was banned in Cambodia in 2016, the same year an Australian nurse and two Cambodian colleagues running a surrogacy business were arrested and later sentenced to 18 months in prison. — dpa