9 jailed for smuggling 199 babies overseas HANOI - Nine people have been jailed for up to 20 years for smuggling 199 babies abroad for adoption. Ringleader Le Quoc Binh, who brokered the adoptions between 1995 and 1997, and Bui Van Khanh, a population registrar in the southern province of An Giang, were each jailed for 20 years, a court official said. Pham Thanh Hai, director of Long Xuyen centre, which cares for motherless children, received an eight-year prison term, the official at An Giang provincial court said. Six others, including a provincial hospital doctor who helped Binh locate babies, received terms of between one and seven years for receiving bribes. Prosecutors said Binh's network approached poor Vietnamese families and young mothers in hospitals offering to care for their children at the centre. After putting their babies in the orphanage, parents later discovered their children had been placed for adoption abroad. The case has raised international concern about lax laws and dishonest brokers who dupe both natural parents and foreigners seeking to adopt children from Vietnam. "If the Government makes it clear this sort of thing leads to a heavy penalty, then people will be more careful," said a foreign lawyer and father of an adopted child. The lawyer said he and his wife arranged the adoption without going through a broker after discovering it was impossible to find a legitimate one. "It's rotten to the core. We talked to a couple of agents through reputable adoption agencies and you would have no idea of how they got children," he said. "I assume they paid for them." Most of the 199 babies were aged under one and came from poor farming families and provincial hospitals. Agence France Presse - January 22, 2000.