SANTO DOMINGO.- The Dominican Government has confirmed that a Russian boy who had been adopted but his status changed in Dominicain Republic is under care of the Child Wellbeing Agency (CONANI), whose Adoption Department director Librada Vidal, citing legal reasons, declined to issue an official statement.

However Freisi Valdez, an official of the Legal Department confirmed to Dominican Today that the boy, Denis Khokhryakov, known to the agency as Diego Sologub, is under its care.

IN Moscow, the official agency Itar-Tass reports that the Russian Foreign Ministry hopes to get information from the Dominican Republic about the conditions for bringing Khokhryakov back to the homeland, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said on Friday.

“Currently the Russian Embassy in Venezuela is making every effort to get official information from the Dominican Republic on the conditions for brining the boy back to the homeland. We hope for cooperation and understanding of this problem by the authorities in the Dominican Republic,” the official said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry is seeking to bring Russian citizen Denis Khokhryakov (Sologub), born in 1998, back to the homeland. “In 2004 the Russian foster parents brought the child in the Dominican Republic (Russia does not have a diplomatic mission in the country),” the official recalled.

“As a result of the unlawful activity of the foster parents the boy was actually left without the parental care, got in a Dominican family, and finally the adoption agencies for children and teenagers in the Dominican Republic (CONANI) took care of him,” the official said.

Russia rug trafficking link

Al-Jazeerah reports quoting a security source that "the boy was sold by a drug lord," and his adoptive parents are now in custody in Russia pending an investigation into cocaine trafficking.