Casa Del Sur

1973 - 1974: Kurtz finds a way to "circumvent the laws and regulations of the entire world"

"Seymour Kurtz has come up with the perfect setup... Kurtz has found a way to circumvent the laws and regulations of the entire world," said Lynn McTaggart..

He did this by setting up a series of corporations, each to handle a single, specific function in the adoption process.

• He founded Casa del Sur in Mexico City to make the actual placement of babies; it opened in 1973. To obtain babies for adoption, Kurtz started an advertising campaign in Mexican newspapers and radio stations, with anti-abortion messages ("don't kill your child").
• Also in 1973, he founded a nonprofit corporation called Tzyril Foundation, located in the same office as Easter House. The purpose of Tzyril was to "underwrite" Casa del Sur or any other adoption agency and to act as an advertising agency, referral service, and intermediary between inquiring couples and the Mexican agency. Couples paid service fees to Tzyril Foundation, rather than Casa del Sur.
• Soon after incorporating Tzyril, Kurtz established Stichting Susu in The Hague, Holland, and planned for it to "communicate" the availability of Mexican babies to European clients. Because of the distance he had to travel to get it running, "the Dutch government's lack of enthusiasm," and the fact that it was "unnecessarily duplicitous," Kurtz decided to let Stitching Susu "expire" by 1977.
• Next, in 1974, Kurtz established Suku Corporation, a for-profit Delaware corporation, to handle the legal and immigration work involved in Mexican adoptions.
• Finally, Easter House, by "agreement" with Stichting Susu and Tzyril Foundation, would handle the home studies of applicants who wanted to adopt Mexican children, as well as the adoption of Illinois infants.

"The brilliance of Kurtz's convoluted setup", said McTaggart, was that he had established a means by which his own organizations could collect all the money in an agency adoption normally disbursed to separate entities (home-study fees and legal fees, for instance). In addition, he had an American foundation charging a service fee that was considerably higher than the actual costs of a Mexican adoption.