Hallyday, 65 - still popular in France for bringing rock 'n' roll to the country in the 1960s - and his wife this week visited Vietnam, where in 2004 they adopted a three-month-old girl.

'Johnny Hallyday came to Vietnam and he has adopted a Vietnamese girl,' Mr Vu Duc Long, head of Vietnam's International Adoptions Agency, told AFP. 'All the formalities have been finished. She is with them now.'

Mr Vu said the girl was less than one year old and in good health. He declined to give further details, such as her name or the orphanage she came from.

The Gstaad, Switzerland-based couple, who were staying in a Hanoi luxury hotel, visited the French embassy on Christmas Eve, a witness said.

The baby girl they adopted came from a social welfare centre in northern Vietnam, said a Vietnamese source who declined to be named.

The couple in 2004 adopted a girl they called Jade from Thanh Ba orphanage in Phu Tho province, 70 kilometres north-east of Hanoi.

Adoptions from Vietnam have come under a cloud since the US embassy here published a damning report in April, detailing claims of widespread abuses.

The US report charged that some adoption agencies had routinely given large donations to Vietnamese orphanages, which falsely identified some infants as abandoned by their parents and gave the babies false papers.

Vietnam has rejected the claims.

There have been no suggestions of irregularities in Hallyday's adoptions. -- AFP