PHNOM PENH, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday sentenced an Australian nurse and her two accomplices to 18 months in prison each for operating commercial surrogacy services in the country, according to a verdict.
Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, director of Fertility Solutions PGD clinic, and two Cambodian helpers - a 35-year-old female nurse and a 28-year-old male staff - were arrested in November 2016 in Phnom Penh.
They were found guilty of acting as intermediaries in surrogacy and engaging in falsifying documents, according to the verdict pronounced by the court's presiding judge Sor Lina.
"The court decides to sentence each of them to one year and six months in prison," the verdict said.
It also fined them 2,000 U.S. dollars in total.
During a hearing on June 13, Davis-Charles, who is also a fertility specialist, said she operated commercial surrogacy services in Cambodia since early 2014, moving from Thailand when the country banned commercial surrogacy.
She confessed to the court that she had arranged for 23 Cambodian women to carry babies for 18 Australian couples and five American couples.
"In average, we charged a foreign couple 50,000 U.S. dollars for surrogacy services," she told the judge, admitting that she paid 10,000 U.S. dollars to Cambodian women to bear pregnancies on their behalf.
According to her, all born babies had been taken out of Cambodia by their biological parents.
Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in November 2016, describing it as a form of human trading.
