A Bulgarian daily newspaper has uncovered an alleged scheme for trading newborn babies in hospitals across Bulgaria.

Last Thursday the entire documentation about abandoned babies at the Sofia "Sheinovo" maternity hospital for the 2003-2008 period was reported to have gone missing. The stark revelation was made after the regularly scheduled meeting of the Sofia City Council.

Dr. Dimitar Dragiev, then director of the hospital, declined to comment on the information. A day later, sources from the Social Aid Agency said some of the documents had been found, but worries remain that this could be an attempt to cover the traces of a corrupt scheme known as ‘trading with newborns', the Bulgarian daily newspaper Standart reported.

A women requesting anonymity told a Standart reporter that baby trading is a very profitable business. In a nutshell, the couples who want to adopt a child but do not want to wait for ages and deal with heavy bureaucracy, can pay a certain amount of money for a healthy baby.

The Standart also learnt that this scheme works in almost all Bulgarian hospitals. The healthy, white children under three years of age are the most expensive. After an advance payment a lawyer takes the future foster parents to the maternity ward where a young mother is ready to abandon her healthy child at the price of about EUR 5 000, EUR 2 000 of which goes to the lawyer and EUR 1 500 for the doctors.

Against the sum of EUR 5 000 the informant became the happy mother of a healthy little girl. She did not seem worried by the fact that she actually bought her child, because had she opted for the standard procedure, she would have waited for years for her child, the Standart concluded.

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