A mother has been accused of selling newborn twin boys for £9,000 to pay for cosmetic surgery. Sonia Ringoir, a 31-year-old restaurant worker from the Belgian tourist haven of Ghent, was arrested and charged last week after the allegations were made by her estranged husband.

Marc Poppe, 48, told an undercover reporter for Dutch television that Ringoir had sold the babies to a friend to fund liposuction, the fat removal procedure. He said the couple had searched the internet to find a quick way of making money: “It was financially attractive to us. Of course we wouldn’t do it for nothing.”

Since Belgium has no law banning the sale of children, Ringoir has been charged with “degrading treatment” of the twins. She has also been charged with fraud after a Dutch couple alleged she had conned them by falsely offering to be a surrogate mother. If convicted, she could face between one month and five years in jail.

After spending five days in jail, Ringoir was released last Wednesday to await the results of police inquiries. She denied the allegations, claiming she gave her babies away for free last March to a friend who could not have her own child because of a weak heart.

Last week the shutters were down at Ringoir’s large family home in the pretty village of Lovendegem, eight miles from Ghent. The only sign of life was her new boyfriend, Mitch, who stood smoking by the back door. He refused to comment.

In an earlier interview with a local newspaper he had claimed that her husband had “put her under pressure to have her body rebuilt”, saying: “Sonia never had debts before she met Marc.”

In the end she had a gastric band fitted to reduce her appetite rather than liposuction, he said. Ringoir, who has five other children aged between three and 13 by two different fathers, was a “good mother”.

Ringoir’s case came to light during an investigation by Netwerk, a Dutch television programme, into an online trade in surrogate babies between Dutch couples and Belgian mothers. The programme focused on a Dutch couple, Gideon and Tamara Stegeman, who admitted buying a baby from a family in Ghent.

The Stegemans claimed they had previously been deceived by a woman named Sary Levy who charged them £900 for three attempts at artificial insemination. The programme tracked down the mysterious Levy to the home of Ringoir, who admitted that she had been a surrogate mother but refused to answer questions about the Dutch couple.

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