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THESSALONIKI, Greece: Police in northern Greece say they have dismantled what they described as an illegal "birth industry" that involved the sale of babies for adoption.
Police said Wednesday 12 people have been arrested, and that 66 people have been charged.
Thessaloniki crime squad chief, Antonis Tzitzis, said the gang was believed to be one of the "biggest and best organized" in Europe.
He said police traced at least 22 cases of sold babies, 24 sales of eggs and 10 paid surrogate motherhoods between 2016 and 2019. He said the gang netted at least 500,000 euros ($550,000).
Police said the gang, allegedly led by a Greek lawyer and an obstetrician, recruited destitute pregnant women in Bulgaria and paid them up to 5,000 euros to sell their babies to childless Greek couples.
Police said they had broken up the network trafficking babies and even eggs for fertilisation from mainly Bulgarian women, making arrests after raids on private clinics.
Arrested women from Georgia and from the Greek Roma community were there either to give birth or to let the clinic take their eggs to sell on, police said.
In Greece, families with fertility problems are frustrated with the slow pace of the legal adoption procedures -- it can take up to five years.
Another 66 people are under investigation in the network, which is also suspected of money laundering.
"The candidate families for adoption gave between 25,000 and 28,000 euros to adopt a child," said Christos Dimitrakopoulos, the chief of police in Thessaloniki.
"This price covered money paid to the biological mother, the lawyer and the hospitalisation costs and the percentage paid to the network's middleman."
The donor mothers were paid between 4,000 and 5,000 euros to give birth.
In 2011, a Greek court prosecuted 10 Bulgarians and two Greek nationals for having brought 17 pregnant Bulgarian women into the country to sell their babies.
