January 04, 2004 

Star caught up in FBI baby buying probe
JOHN HARLOW, LOS ANGELES


THE Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie is wreathed in smiles as she secures her young son on the saddle of her camel and takes off across baking sands towards the Great Pyramid of Giza. Behind her trots her latest leading man, Colin Farrell, one of the world’s most eligible bachelors, rumoured to be as wild at heart as she is. 
Yet the world of Jolie is facing a threat as dark as any cinematic monster she destroyed as Lara Croft, the action heroine. In Seattle, 7,000 miles from the Four Seasons hotel in Cairo where she spent Christmas registered under the name Miss Lollypop, police are considering whether to take away her baby. 


FBI investigators have closed the Seattle adoption agency that “rescued” baby Maddox from a Cambodian orphanage, claiming that some children it delivered to western parents were not orphans but were bought from desperate rural mothers for as little as a £70 “tip”. 
Jolie has been advised by lawyers to say nothing until the FBI completes Operation Broken Hearts, but speaking last week from Egypt she insisted that she had gone to “great lengths” to ensure Maddox did not have a living birth-mother in Cambodia when she and Billy Bob Thornton, her then husband, arranged the adoption two years ago. 
“I would never rob a mother of her child. I can only imagine how dreadful that would feel,” Jolie said. 
“If a parent has survived, then I would want to meet them, I would want Maddox to meet them, but I have not seen any evidence that either parent of Maddox was still alive. 
“Maddox is my baby, he is by my side all the time, and I think I can give him so much. I can no more imagine living without him than not breathing. Yes, my brain is obviously running over with worries, not just for Maddox but for all the babies and parents concerned.” 
She has already chosen between Maddox and Thornton, who complained that she was over-devoted to the child and left their home: would she choose between Hollywood and Cambodia if she had to live with Maddox in his native land, where she has a home? “In a heartbeat. Nothing means more to me than his happiness.” 
The 28-year-old actress, who won an Oscar in Girl, Interrupted for playing a mentally ill teenager whose character reflected her own turbulent past, has been pondering her options as she takes time off from filming Alexander, Oliver Stone’s biography of the Macedonian conqueror, who is played by Farrell. She plays Olympias, his obsessively protective mother. 
Jolie, who has earned £12m from the two Tomb Raider films in which she played the British adventurer Lara Croft, vented her feelings as she visited a refugee camp on the banks of the Nile filled with families who have fled the civil war in Sudan. These are the kind of vulnerable women who, in her treasured role as an exceptionally vigorous United Nations goodwill ambassador, Jolie has worked to save from slavery and poverty. 
It has been reported that the actress paid Seattle International Adoptions up to £150,000 to arrange the paperwork and deliver the baby to her when she was working on a film about refugees in March 2002 in Namibia. 
Last month Lynn Devin, the agency’s founder, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for falsely claiming that adopted children were orphans and allowed the FBI to dismantle her organisation. Exactly who among her clients received “black market babies” remains locked in confidential court documents. 
Police have refused to say whether Maddox is a legal or illegal adoption, adding: “We are looking at all cases.” 
The adoption of Maddox was “facilitated” by a relative of Devin, a colourful Hawaiian named Lauryn Galindo, 52, who is also facing conspiracy charges. Galindo is famous in Phnom Penh on at least two counts: her ability to ease bureaucratic difficulties with “tips”, which she said consumed most of her fees, and occasional displays of her hula dancing skills for visiting dignitaries and diplomats. 
While refusing to discuss Jolie directly, Galindo denied doing anything wrong. “The Americans and the Cambodians have different definitions of the 50,000 children in orphanages. American officials say both parents have to be dead to count as orphans, but in Cambodia it is enough to say they have given up or disappeared and in that poor country that is all too common,” she told a local newspaper. 
Dr Kek Galabru, head of the Cambodian human rights agency Licadho, said he felt great compassion for Jolie: “The worst you can say is that she acted with her heart rather than her head, but I believe that the child still has at least one parent in Cambodia. I do not think he was either orphaned or abandoned, but paid for like livestock.” He said other babies were simply stolen from their parents. 
“I know the actress has talked about adopting a baby sister from Cambodia for the boy, but I think she should be worried about the baby she already has. This kind of traffic can only cause heartbreak for everyone.”