Two French aid workers jailed for ‘orphan’ fraud

Published on 13/02/2013 00:00

Two French aid workers have been convicted of fraud for trying to bring 103 children from central Africa to France for adoption, claiming they were orphans from Darfur.

The French court sentenced Eric Breteau and Emilie Lelouch of the French charity Zoe’s Ark to two years in prison yesterday. Four other members of the group were given suspended sentences.

The six workers were arrested in Chad in 2007, as they sought to put the children on a plane.

An investigation established that they were from Chad, not neighbouring Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, and that most were not orphans.