Chris Rock Faces Full-Scale Police Probe in South Africa

Chris Rock is facing a full-scale criminal investigation over raising a South African girl in his American home for almost seven years without adopting her.

The comedian and his estranged wife's relationship with Ntombi-futhi Samantha is being looked into by an elite South African police unit over concerns she was taken out of the country without proper legal procedures being followed.

One officer compared the potential offense to 'child trafficking'.

The seven-year-old had been part of Rock's family since November 2008, when he and Malaak Compton-Rock brought her from South Africa to live in their home in Alpine, New Jersey, one of America's most affluent areas, with their two biological daughters.

Compton-Rock subsequently described the South African girl as one of the couple's three children.

But the comedian and his philanthropist wife split last year, and the girl's legal status has now become part of the divorce.

Rock appears to have had no contact with her since the estrangement from Compton-Rock last year, despite spending time with their two other children.

Compton-Rock is now in the process of legally adopting the child in the United States, while it has been reported that the girl entered the U.S. on a leisure travel visa, not as a prospective adoptee.

Now MailOnline can reveal that the Hawks, South Africa's elite police unit, has become involved in the wider investigation already under way in South Africa.