The United States Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has imposed financial sanctions and visa restrictions on four Ugandans for their involvement in activities that victimized young children in a corrupt adoption scheme.
A statement by Pompeo says that Ugandan judges Moses Mukiibi and Wilson Musalu Musene, and Ugandan lawyer Dorah Mirembe and her associate Patrick Ecobu, participated in a scam whereby young children were removed from their families and placed into a corrupt adoption network run by the officials.
"Deceiving innocent Ugandan families into giving up their children for adoption has caused great suffering,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Justin G. Muzinich, is quoted.
"The individuals involved in this corrupt scam deliberately exploited the good faith of Ugandans and Americans to enrich themselves. The United States remains committed to seeking out and exposing individuals violating human rights across the world.”
The U.S. government designated these four individuals pursuant to Executive Order 13818, which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, reads part of the August 17 statement by the Department of State.
"The Department of State also designated Mukiibi and Musene under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2020 (Div. G, P.L. 116-94) due to their involvement in significant corruption."
Together, it is noted, these individuals engaged in corruption to arrange the adoption of Ugandan children by unwitting parents in the United States.
Mirembe’s law firm is said to have used the services of intermediary parties to seek out vulnerable families in remote Ugandan villages, "promising parents that their children would be moved to Kampala to further their education."
"American prospective adoptive parents then traveled to Uganda to adopt children from an unlicensed children’s home in Kampala."
The Department of State notes that Mirembe, with the assistance of Ecobu, facilitated bribes to Ugandan judges and other Ugandan government officials to fraudulently procure adoption cases, either directly or through an interlocutor.
Mirembe paid bribes to get cases steered to judges Mukiibi and Musene. Mukiibi and Musene are current or former government officials who have, directly or indirectly, engaged in corruption.
"Under Section 7031(c), once the Secretary of State designates officials of foreign governments for their involvement, directly or indirectly, in significant corruption, those individuals and their immediate family members are ineligible for entry into the United States. The law also requires the Secretary of State to either publicly or privately designate or identify such officials."
The Department of State underscored that the implicated individuals’ actions resulted in the submission of false documentation to the Department of State for consideration in visa adjudication, a falsification the Department will not tolerate.
Sanctions implications
As a result of Monday's action, it is noted, all property and interests in property of the implicated individuals, and of any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, 50 percent or more by them, individually, or with other blocked persons, that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons, are blocked and must be reported to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
"Unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC or otherwise exempt, OFAC’s regulations generally prohibit all transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons."
The prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person or the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods or services from any such person.