In general, these centers dealt with intermediaries of the clients and surrogate mothers. The justice system raided them to search for medical records and administrative payment files.
There are seven notary offices where the “consent” was signed by the pregnant women before the procedure and at the time of delivery. The seizure of notarial actions and protocols, signature certifications regarding the cases was ordered.
Procedures were also carried out in three law firms, which are the ones that appear to represent the surrogate mothers or the clients in these procedures.
In addition, presentation orders were issued regarding five maternity hospitals in the city of Buenos Aires where the births took place.
The maneuvers
People and companies established abroad – with activities in our country – would have participated, through which the people involved obtained significant profits, judicial sources confirmed.
The ordered procedures were carried out simultaneously by the Human Trafficking and Cybercrime Divisions of the PFA, led by Commissioner Marcela Hurt and Commissioner Adrián Acosta.
Advertising of services and “Argentina Program”
The individuals and legal companies against which the investigation is directed advertised the services they provided through different means of communication abroad, through which couples who wanted to have children – who could not carry out a pregnancy – contacted them, to those who offered a “service” called “Argentina Program” with an approximate value of US$50,000 dollars.
This included the selection of the pregnant person, the acquisition of the embryos to be implanted, the treatment itself, regular pregnancy check-ups and the subsequent delivery.
Recruitment of pregnant women
The other side of this “business” is the system of recruiting pregnant women, consisting of companies contacting women through social networks, and taking advantage of their socioeconomic needs. They were offered the sum of US$10,000 to carry out the pregnancy; amount of money to which they added a “plus” of between US$ 1000/2000 if the delivery were by cesarean section.
If for any reason the pregnancy was interrupted, the companies involved refused to make payments, except for the amounts that had been paid for minimum monthly expenses.
Sources consulted indicated that, in this way, the actors involved took advantage of the situation of poverty and vulnerability of the women by offering them ten thousand dollars in exchange for making the necessary attempts to cause a pregnancy, go through the pregnancy with all the corresponding controls. , and deliver the child born through this practice.
All without taking into account the possible physical and emotional consequences – proven in the case – that this type of practices can have on pregnant women.
According to sources, the final purpose of this illicit business was the registration of the child and its subsequent delivery. To do this, the companies involved in the business took advantage of “the poor control provided for in the local regulations of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, thereby guaranteeing that birth registrations were carried out, even when the pregnant people resided and had “The treatment was done in other provinces of the country.”
“This entire sophisticated business scheme is articulated with the sole purpose of achieving the birth of a boy or girl to give it to a couple who in many cases were of foreign origin without residence in the country, with whom they have no genetic link, cultural or social.
The different actors involved
Agencies intended for the selection of surrogate mothers, agencies that contact foreign people seeking to become parents, fertility clinics and notaries, all with purely lucrative purposes.
“They take advantage of both the socioeconomic needs that countless women in our country may experience and the weak national regulation on the matter and registration in this City of Buenos Aires, to make the Argentine Republic a place of “reproductive tourism” by “which couples arrive from mostly developed nations, without any legal or sociocultural link with our country, for the sole purpose of registering and subsequently returning to their place of origin with a boy or girl.”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office considered that article 145 bis of the Penal Code is at stake in the case since the people investigated would have regularly carried out a criminal business dedicated to the recruitment of women, many of them vulnerable and in conditions of economic deprivation. , with the purpose of being subjected to exploitation comparable to reduction to servitude, through the practice of surrogacy.
All in exchange for financial compensation and in some cases putting their health at risk.
The purpose: obtain large economic profits.
The prosecution also postulated that this criminal figure comes into play with regard to the commercialization of boys and girls as this treatment implies their reduction to a situation equivalent to slavery.
constitutional crime
The purchase and sale of human beings constitutes a constitutional crime inserted in its art. 15 where the constituents expressly provided that “every contract of sale of persons is a crime for which those who celebrate it, and the notary or official who authorizes it, will be responsible.”
To these hypotheses would be added, in turn, the commission of crimes against public faith for having false statements inserted in public instruments, which materializes in the alleged agreements between the surrogate and the clients presented by the public notaries before the Registry. Civil of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
Case 1 and the German woman: the beginning of the investigation
The case began on January 25 of the current year, following the presentation made by the head of the Litigation Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship, before the drawing room of the Federal Chamber.
The Consulate of the Argentine Republic in the City of Bonn of the Federal Republic of Germany was contacted by personnel from the Provincial Directorate for Minors of the Federated State of Saarland, who reported that a 58-year-old German woman had presented herself at the hospital. of the town where he resides and requested medical attention for a three-month-old girl born in Argentina – proving his affiliation with a birth certificate issued by the Civil Registry of the City of Buenos Aires and an Argentine passport.
The German official warned that the girl was in terrible health conditions and that the woman who took her to the guard was not in a position to provide her with the necessary care, a circumstance for which she notified the local police and removed her. provisional custody of the baby and handed her over to the care of a surrogate family.
The investigation allowed us to determine, on the one hand, that the birth of the minor was registered in the Registry of the Civil Status and Capacity of Persons of CABA under the protection of Provision 122/DGRC/20.
It was also established that the fertilization process was carried out in a private medical institution located in this city, where the surrogacy treatment was carried out and the surrogate mother was identified.
As confirmed by the sources consulted, it was possible to identify that this event had not been an isolated event, and it was revealed that it was an illicit business mechanism, developed at a national and international level, specifically dedicated to carrying out “pregnancy by birth” treatments. substitution” in Argentina.
For this reason, a series of measures were carried out to establish the number of births that were carried out, once the internal provisions 93/DGRC/17, 103/DGRC/17 and 122/DGRC/2022 came into force, which enabled this type of registration in the City of Buenos Aires in preventive terms, according to sources.
Thus, 147 files corresponding to cases of surrogacy carried out between 2018 and the month of April of the current year were learned and it was noted that in at least 49 of them the clients present common characteristics to those of the case. which triggered the beginning of the investigation.
These are foreign people of different nationalities; mostly with residence addresses outside the Argentine Republic; In some cases it was verified that they had not made genetic contributions; and the majority did not prove the emotional bond with the pregnant women in a way that would allow the inference that the THRA medical procedures were carried out directly, with prior knowledge of the people subjected to this practice and without the intermediation of people who obtain an economic benefit. of these practices.
In none of these did civil judges intervene to authorize the procedure nor to establish filiation, but exclusively notaries or notaries who obtained supposed contractual consents based on statements that could be established to be wholly or partially false.
In this sense, it is investigated whether, in the same way as in “case 1”, a series of intermediaries intervened in these other cases who were the ones who would ultimately obtain large profits from the exploitation of pregnant women in a clearly vulnerable situation. and the commercialization of boys and girls born in national territory
Source: Ambito
I’m a recent graduate of the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism. I started working as a news reporter for 24 Hours World about two years ago, and I’ve been writing articles ever since. My main focus is automotive news, but I’ve also written about politics, lifestyle, and entertainment.
