IT SHOULD have been a simple act of compassion. When Shaun and Josephine Moncur first heard about Andrey, and how his grandmother planned to sell him so his organs could be used in transplant operations, they were taken aback by the magnitude of the betrayal.

As they watched the news footage from Moscow, they were struck by the astonishing physical similarity between the small boy being led away by Russian police and their own son Andrew, then eight years old.

Each member of the family who saw the pictures on the television remarked on the likeness: it was as if they were watching Andrew. Shaun and Josephine felt they could not just leave it at that. They needed to know that Andrey would be given the chance of a fresh start with a new family who would not let him down.

Instead, they discovered that he stood little or no chance of finding a new home. They decided that if no-one else would help, they would.

But what they were not prepared for was the size of the task they were taking on. Far from helping them to help Andrey, the authorities who had to sanction the adoption put hurdle after hurdle in their path.

Faced with bizarre local council guidelines, mountains of paperwork and intransigent and unhelpful embassy officials, it was little short of a miracle that on 26 June this year, nearly three years since they saw the first news report of Andrey’s rescue, that they finally touched down at Heathrow with him.

It was not even as if the Moncurs were a childless couple desperate to go to any lengths to adopt. They already had five boys of their own, Ross - now three - only just born, the others ranging in age from Barry, 27, from a previous marriage, down to Andrew, then eight. They shared a big house in the countryside outside Glasgow.

The Russian authorities were as helpful as they could be. The education department in the city of Ryazan, 130 miles south of Moscow - where Andrey was rescued by police as his grandmother took delivery of the bagful of dollars she had negotiated for his sale - told them the boy was under a care order and would be put on a regional list for adoption, and then a national list. But the chances were not high. The economic conditions in Russia were not good, and the country did not have a culture of adoption.

But when the Moncurs approached North Ayrshire Council, their local authority, they hit a brick wall. According to Mr Moncur, the council told them it was not its policy to place a child with older and younger children. The child could join a family as the oldest, or the youngest, but not in the middle.

"We were really down. We approached them in the spring of the year and it was October before they gave in. We had to go to our MSP to get them to do it, but I was still worried that they would just go through the motions," said Mr Moncur.

Andrey had been abandoned by his mother, who had gone off with a man who was not Andrey’s father. To adopt him, the couple needed to get a home study report from their local authority. It was more than a year after they first saw the reports of Andrey’s plight that the council relented and began the slow process.

The home study visits began in October 2001 and lasted eight months. "They come and check you out, go through all your family background, your relationships, two hours a week for eight months," said Mr Moncur. "The first question they asked was how I got on with my grandfather."

The questions kept coming: "The social workers wanted to know how he would adapt to coming over here. Would he have seen a car or a television. But it’s Russia, not the Amazon rainforest."

The children were questioned, too. Were they happy with the plan, did they want another brother? Once a social worker had completed her report, her boss had to assess it and the family were obliged to submit to further questioning. Eventually, in May 2002, the case went before the children’s panel. For ten days, the Moncurs waited for the result.

To their delight the report was positive. But now they had to place themselves in the dead hands of government.

The paperwork went to the Scottish Executive, where it stayed for ten more days, then on to the Department of Health in London. From there it had to go to the family’s Russian lawyer to be notarised, then back to the Department of Health for the final stamp of approval. It was 27 December before the papers, all 140 pages of them, reached Moscow.

With approval granted, the family travelled to Ryazan to meet Andrey, returning after a week to wait for the compulsory six-week cooling off period. In the meantime, there was more paperwork to be completed.

"We just wanted him here but the papers sat in a pile for weeks. I was told it would be dealt with when it was dealt with," said Mr Moncur.

So long did they wait that their validations ran out. Everything had to be redone, new police checks carried out, everything reissued. Finally they had their day in court in Russia and the adoption was approved.

They faced one final stumbling block. To take Andrey out of Russia they needed a visa, at a cost of £260. "We had to wait all day to be seen," said Mr Moncur. "Then we were told we had applied for the wrong visa. They said it would be ready to collect the next morning. It was ridiculous."

Their flight back to Britain was due to leave the next evening. Nervously, they returned to their hotel.

The following day, they called to check that the visa was ready. "I was told there had been a query from Edinburgh - he should have been interviewed by the staff in Moscow because he was seven years old," said Mr Moncur.

The embassy closed for lunch, and it was not until 3:40pm that Andrey could be interviewed. Shaun, Josephine, Andrey and their translator sat on one side of a glass screen in the embassy, the embassy staff on the other side.

"The woman was a patronising bitch," said Mr Moncur. "She didn’t speak Russian, so all the questions were through an interpreter."

"The first question was, ‘Are you excited about going to England with Mr and Mrs Moncur? Well, the child knows he is going to Scotland - all the kids have been kidding him about wearing a kilt and I think he had been having nightmares about that - and he told her he was going to Scotland. She told him everyone knew it was the same place."

By the time she asked Andrey whether he was excited about going on an aircraft, he had had enough. He refused to answer any more questions.

At 4:28pm, two minutes before the embassy was due to close, the visa was issued and Andrey finally arrived in Britain on 26 June to begin life with his new family.