Congo case: Mom from Zagreb ran trafficking of children from Congo
How Adriana Sučić Roginić earned millions in the business of adopting children from Africa through the company "Moja obitelj" doo.
The owner of the Zagreb company "Moja obitelj doo", Adriana Sučić Roginić, through which she organized the adoption of African children, was arrested in the DR Congo last year on suspicion of child trafficking and then taken into custody, where she spent a month.
The authorities in the city of Lubumbashi have also opened an investigation into the woman for allegedly falsifying some of the documentation and failing to comply with the adoption procedures. She was released from custody under unknown circumstances, which is not surprising considering that Congo is considered one of the five countries with the highest rate of corruption in the world. However, because of her, two Croatian missionaries, Fr. Filip Sučić and Fr. Ante Kutleša, subsequently ended up behind bars in Lubumbashi, who were “removed” from the plane that was supposed to take them to Brussels in a police operation, solely because one of them had the same last name as the owner of “Moje obitelji” and were suspected of collaborating.
Former SOA employee
In recent years, the Croatian public has had the opportunity to meet Adriana Sučić Roginić in a completely different light through the media. The public was then bombarded with news about the courageous mother who adopted a child from Africa, and then decided to help other potential adoptive parents by founding a company that would provide them with consulting services and thus help them get the child they so desperately wanted. Truth be told, even back then, at the very beginning of Adriana Sučić Roginić's media self-promotion, there were those who did not react well to headlines like "You choose the baby, and I deliver it to you from the Congo".
However, potential adoptive parents, more eager to have a child than willing to admit to themselves that “My Family” may not be the best address for fulfilling their dream, have started knocking on the company’s door. Over the past two years, as many as 50 Croatian and an unknown number of foreign families have signed contracts with the company to provide advisory assistance in adopting children from Africa. As far as we know, 33 of them have brought children from Congo to Croatia so far, and it is not known how many are currently in the process or have given up on it.
But what they all have in common is that Adriana Sučić Roginić has robbed them of their rights, regardless of whether they have had a child or are still expecting one. Some of them will never have one because they cannot afford to continue paying the insane amounts of blackmail, threatening that if they don't pay, they will never have the child.
The silence that has surrounded this story of the exploitation of perhaps the strongest human emotion – the one that concerns a child we already have or are just dreaming of – should not be surprising. Adoptive parents who have already had a child are afraid of losing them due to the shady dealings of the company they worked with. It is undoubtedly even harder for people whose adoption process is still ongoing. They are afraid to speak out because they believe that doing so will destroy the few precious chances they have of ever getting a child from Congo. The company “My Family” has thus far managed to prevent all attempts to expose its work without hindrance. Perhaps also because its owner is a former employee of the Security Intelligence Agency (SOA). Obviously experienced in deception, she has organized her work down to the last detail.
The first meeting with the adoptive parents ended with the signing of an agreement. The entrance fee to the adoptive parents' circle was 42,000 kuna. The appendix to the agreement also states that the adoptive parent will have to pay the same amount in the event that the child brought to Croatia must be returned to Congo for some legal reason. There are also articles that talk about compensation of 20,000 kuna that the adoptive parent must pay if they share the information that they are the adoptive parent with anyone. Ariana Sučić Roginić was particularly "peeved" by the possibility of multiple adoptive parents communicating about their process, so she threatened a fine of 20,000 kuna in that case as well. On one occasion, she used threats to stop several adoptive parents from communicating via online forums.
What is also striking is the fact that the entire time, in addition to the additional cost of a plane ticket and pocket money of 12,000 kuna, she was also offering the service of bringing a child from Congo to Croatia. In all of this, it is not clear what kind of counseling this is that involves "delivering" a child to your doorstep.
– So, if a child is offered and money is demanded for it, then it is called child trafficking. If the payment of that money is offered in cash, then that Croatian LLC is committing a tax offense. If the Croatian embassy in Paris stopped issuing our visas to Congolese passports of those children a few months ago, then there is a suspicion that something is wrong with all this. And how is it possible that this woman ends up in detention in Congo, and then after returning to Croatia continues to do the same thing, and that no one here "asks about her health" – one of our interlocutors who had the misfortune of using the services of "My Family" is outraged.
For a handful of dollars
At the same time, the question arises: why Congo? Adriana Sučić Roginić adopted a child from Ethiopia. In her appearances in the media, she emphasized that her help to other families is based on the “know-how” method she acquired when adopting her child, on language skills, experience in the field, and contacts.
To help you understand the difference between Ethiopia and the DR Congo, let's try to draw a European parallel. Lubumbashi is about 2,600 kilometers from Addis Ababa, similar to the distance between the Swedish city of Gothenburg and Tirana. In Ethiopia, which is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, Amharic and, to a lesser extent, English are spoken, while French and Swahili are spoken in Lubumbashi. In the Congo, various wars and conflicts have been going on for 17 years without a break, and the inhabitants of that country are among the poorest in the world. However, there is another important difference. The DR Congo is not a signatory to the Hague Convention and adoptions in that country take place exclusively under the umbrella of national laws. Ethiopia has meanwhile banned the adoption of children for foreign citizens.
– In the DR Congo, you don't need to forge a single document because corruption is so strong that for a handful of dollars you can get any kind of certificate, and that legally. It is a country of complete chaos in which a foreigner is an ideal victim if local "entrepreneurs" sense that they can get money out of him – explains Saša Ričković, the only Africanist in Croatia, adding that many more children there could easily find their adoptive home in Europe if the Congolese didn't strip their future parents bare. Of course, an important role in this is played by the intermediary who enables them to do this, who sets up the victims, in this case "My family". In most cases, this was done through the law firm Yav&Associates from Lubumbashi. And on its website, you can easily read the classic story from Congo. It is stated that a child can be adopted, but that the process is difficult, that it is necessary to have top experts, namely them, on the ground. They just missed saying that the adoptive parent must be a millionaire. They also listed their various doctorates and professorships, excellent language skills...
– Whenever I called the office that “My Family” connected me to, I would hear the maximum of their expertise in the form of “yes, no problem”. But their invoices were peppery, frequent and merciless. Adriana Sučić Roginić left me at the mercy of these people, and later she even changed lawyers without informing me, so I soon started paying others in Lubumbashi. The director of the home from which my daughter Naomi came was sending me invoices from some of his companies registered for God knows what – says adoptive father Dario Baričević.
It is not yet known how much “My Family” was involved in distributing this loot in Congo. However, if we calculate only the “entrance fees” of 42,000 kuna that Croatian adoptive parents had to pay if they wanted to come under her roof, the total amount rose to more than 2 million kuna. She allegedly charged some even higher amounts, probably concluding that she could. If, however, we calculate that on average each adoptive parent spent at least 200,000 kuna, we will arrive at the amount of 10 million kuna.
– We know of a woman from Split who has just taken out a new loan to complete the adoption process. Adriana is being ripped off, the Congolese are being ripped off. And who can help her? – asks a group of adoptive parents who have recently been organizing to put an end to the crime of “My Family”. But they all still want to remain anonymous. Out of fear for their children. They wonder whether the Croatian state can protect their interests and the interests of their children. Although most of these little ones today have proper Croatian documents, they are still shocked by the scale of the “My Family” fraud and fear that they themselves could find themselves in unpleasant situations. It seems that the Ombudsman for Children would have to fulfill the basic task of her job in that case.
The fact that the state has not yet legally regulated cases of adoption from abroad was clearly well-used by Adriana Sučić Roginić. On the other hand, it is not clear what happened to the media star and philanthropist she presented herself to be just two years ago? Her company has been in liquidation since January of this year, and she only answers the phone to a few people.
Only accepts cash.
According to information we received from DR Congo, Adriana Sučić Roginić did indeed go to Africa to pick up children and bring them to Croatia at the beginning of her business. And so on until last summer when she was arrested. Allegedly, the direct cause of this was the case of a Rijeka resident who decided to go to pick up the child himself, but did not have valid documents. Namely, he tried to take the child out of the country with a Congolese passport that contained a Croatian visa issued in Paris. They were stopped at the airport in Lubumbashi: he was allowed to leave the country, but without the child, and Adriana Sučić Roginić was put behind bars.
At that moment, the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched an investigation into the mysterious visas and the person who issued them in France. Allegedly, all the connections in the Croatian secret services that Adriana Sučić Roginić used through her former colleagues were also thoroughly combed through. The business empire thus began to collapse. Probably in a panic, the owner of “Moje obitelji” began calling her adoptive parents and asking them to withdraw their payments from their accounts and pay her 42,000 kuna in cash.
We have confirmation of this from two adoptive families who refused. Adoption counseling suddenly received the label of child trafficking. However, some adoptive parents were left in a vacuum. They paid the money, received a photo of the child. They began to consider him their own. That is why they continued to pay for expensive services to bring him in. “My family” can no longer help them with this. Just as it could not help many before them. Is it now the turn of the State Attorney's Office?