Embryo couriers, student egg donors and surrogates. Alev Scott profiles northern Cyprus’s baby business, where Brits go for cheap treatment
Embryo couriers, student egg donors and cut-price surrogates. Journalist Alev Scott investigates northern Cyprus’s booming baby business — where Brits head for cheap treatment, gender selection and lax legislation
Alev Scott: “All I can think about is how the surrogate was essentially in a hostage situation”
MARK HARRISON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE, GETTY IMAGES. BABY POSED BY MODEL
By Alev Scott Friday February 20 2026, The Times
A young woman kneels on a bed, wearing a black corset and arching her back. Her eyes are closed as she tilts her head, blonde hair cascading over one shoulder, hands gripping bare thighs. Her make-up is perfectly applied — pink lip gloss, soft peach eyeshadow, nails shiny black, matching the corset. She could be anywhere between 18 and 30.
I check her profile information to find out. Date of birth: 31/03/99. Height: 170cm. Weight: 53kg. Nationality: Ukrainian.
It is an intimate scene but the lighting suggests a professional photography studio; someone has invested in this shot. Other photos in her file show similar poses: standing in purple lingerie, fingers pulling slightly at the edges of her knickers. I open another woman’s file. These photos are more casual — a brunette gazing over her shoulder on a beach, then pouting at the camera in close-up. I check some of her details. Menstrual cycle: Regular. Previous pregnancies: 1. Donated previously: Yes. Number of eggs collected: 25-30.
“€75,000 is for guaranteed child in two years,” I am told. “If no child, we give you back money”
MARK HARRISON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE. BABIES POSED BY MODELS
These files have been sent to me by an Israeli agency that sources international egg donors and surrogates for their clients, working in partnership with local clinics in low-cost fertility hubs around the world. I have decided that the best way to understand the global egg market is by posing as a potential customer of advanced maternal age — someone who needs a younger woman’s eggs.
I have been communicating with the agency’s representatives, knowing they are skirting the already opaque laws of the countries in which they operate. A few months later, I encounter some of these representatives at an event in Dublin. I hope they don’t recognise my voice.
The fertility industry, although geographically and financially vast, seems to be a small world — everyone knows everyone at the fertility trade show in Dublin. I insert myself into the conversation between the director of operations of an embryo courier company and a surrogacy consultant. They are talking about a couple of notorious couriers who they claim extort parents-to-be by demanding extra money to take their embryos from one country to another, knowing the parents are in no position to argue and will pay almost anything to get their embryos to the target clinic within the tight parameters of IVF treatment schedules.
The courier director sounds like a spymaster
“It seems like kidnapping,” I say. There is a silence; clearly this is an overstatement for these seasoned professionals, and I realise that, much like the Alabama Supreme Court, I have effectively decreed that an embryo is a child. The courier director expresses her surprise that one particularly unethical operator (“K”) is still working, despite his terrible reputation. Later, I look up K and discover one-star negative reviews for his UK-based services, which are nevertheless recommended by some clinics — “absolute scammer”; “criminal enterprise”; “DO NOT USE”. Three of his five almost identically named companies are listed as dissolved on Companies House; two are active. He has been around for decades, a known name that clinics probably prefer to newcomers.
The courier director, whom I’ll call “M”, is a polished woman who has worked in embryo shipping for many years. She explains how she chooses and trains her team of 16 hand couriers. She sounds like some kind of spymaster, describing how her agents cross international borders, evading capture. The reality is not so different — armed with highly sensitive genetic material, these couriers must navigate the danger spots of every major airport as the clock ticks and the embryos risk deteriorating. Depending on the size of the cryogenic container, the time frame for frozen embryo stability is usually ten days, but this particular company is proud of its guaranteed 24-72-hour door-to-door service — freight can take much longer.
Embryo samples are removed from cryogenic storage GETTY IMAGES
I learn that M’s couriers avoid Dublin and Vienna because airport staff insist on x-raying hand luggage, which would be dangerous to the embryos; they travel by train or taxi to nearby airports instead. Some airline ground staff are convinced that the cylinders contain liquid, although in fact they contain dry ice; her couriers are trained to persuade them otherwise without opening the cylinder to prove it.
“People are going wherever surrogacy is,” she tells me. “Northern Cyprus is big. So are Georgia and Colombia. Brazil was big, but no longer.” She tells me which clinics operate “by the book” in terms of export permits and which she believes do not. She refuses to work with some of them, including one in northern Cyprus.
“Is that one still in business?” asks the surrogacy expert incredulously.
I make a note of its name.
A month later, I am in northern Cyprus’s capital city of Nicosia, in the infamous clinic. It seems as legitimate as all the others — busy, slick, bustling with professional-looking staff. It is impossible from appearances to know one clinic from another; potential clients may as well stick a pin in a map bristling with rival names. Northern Cyprus — which happens to be my motherland — is one of the most popular low-cost destinations to pursue fertility treatment.
Nicosia in Cyprus GETTY IMAGES
Even clinics that operate by the book offer patients options like gender selection of embryos, which is banned in most countries outside the US. Many of these clinics have a good word-of-mouth reputation and, crucially, prices for egg freezing and IVF are ultra-competitive. (I was quoted about €2,500, or £2,175, by clinics to harvest and freeze my eggs — about a third of the cost at a private London clinic.)
Donor egg prices here vary wildly — off the books at least. Women up to 55 are allowed to undergo IVF, with their own frozen or donated eggs; in some cases, women over 55 are also treated, if approved by the Ministry of Health.
The old walled city of Nicosia remains the same as I remember it growing up, but in its urbanised neighbourhoods the explosion of IVF clinics is striking — I count 17 in a city of roughly 100,000 people, and there are more in the coastal towns. Nicosia’s population is a mix of locals, many of whom are from Turkey, students from Africa and the Middle East, and workers from Asia. I discover travelling surrogates from Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan.
I decide to get the most out of my fabricated persona. I’m making my inquiries in the capacity of an infertile woman who needs donor eggs to create an embryo with her husband’s sperm, plus (potentially, if this doesn’t work) the services of a surrogate. Hyperconscious of my existing biological children, this charade feels both blasphemous and bizarre — as though I am cheating on my children by pretending they don’t exist.
A laboratory technician performs in vitro fertilisation GETTY IMAGES
“Sofia”, a patient coordinator, has started sending me egg donor files to browse over WhatsApp. In my hotel, I flick through the files on my phone, feeling like a straight man on Tinder. Sofia’s emails have progressed to a WhatsApp text exchange involving superfluous heart emojis. This feels like a courtship, a two-way seduction, that is heading in the right direction. Sofia explains how the donor pricing system works — the women in each folder fall into set price brackets, but she has to double check the price of each individual woman.
“If you can see one you would choose, I can ask,” she types.
I pick a Russian profile at random, claiming she looks like me, and ask how much her eggs would be.
“€4,500,” comes the answer.
I ask if the price depends on the woman’s nationality. I wait, curious, for her reply as she types.
“Yes, it is by nationality, as it depends on their tickets to come here for egg donation etc, so the prices range.”
‘Girls with blonde hair and blue eyes are more expensive’
Most clinics prefer fresh to frozen eggs, but if clients require particular physical or ethnic characteristics not provided by local donors, more expensive “travelling donors” must be engaged. I’m sceptical of the rep’s explanation of the higher prices because I know that travelling donors are often paid a lot more than just their air travel and accommodation — they are not recouping costs but making an income. As an agent tells me, “Young girls, they are coming and going. Let’s say the donor is charging €5,000 plus transport and accommodation… It climbs to €10,000.”
My suspicion that phenotypes are relevant to pricing is confirmed by a rival fertility agency, cheaper than its competitors. Its customer liaison is noticeably less polished; the coordinator, “Oksana”, speaks poor English and juggles my call with others. “Girls with blonde hair and blue eyes more expensive,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “They have more model appearance. And these girls cost €600; the others are €450.”
A surrogate mother undergoes an ultrasound in Tbilisi, Georgia AFP
I nod sagely, as though this is perfectly normal information to receive. Then I notice my voice recorder has stopped, so I restart it and ask her to repeat what she has just said. She complies, to my surprise. This is not controversial to her.
I find myself looking through the egg donor files almost obsessively, hunting for clues like a stalker. I recognise the same photos and realise that agencies share a pool of women, presumably receiving a cut when one of “their” donors is chosen by a competitor’s client. It is hard not to think of this as pimping.
I spot a new folder in the Google Drive called “VIP”. One of the differentiating features of these profiles is the implausible healthiness not only of the donors themselves, but all their family members. Almost every single profile has zero family history of any ill health; unchecked boxes list a range of conditions from acne to suicide attempts via asthma, blood disorders, cancer, migraines, alcoholism and Alzheimer’s. It feels like the medical records of the perfect genetic specimens in the sci-fi film Gattaca — and they are probably equally fictional. I assume the donors are advised to leave the boxes blank by their recruiters.
A human egg is extracted every 15 seconds
Some of the women appear to have had so many cosmetic procedures that it’s hard to know what they — or their genes — really look like, let alone whether they have the natural blonde hair I might be paying extra for. The filters don’t help either. It feels like I could be catfishing among the catfishers.
At a clinic in Famagusta, a port on Cyprus’s east coast, the “patient experience” manager tells me that the company only uses anonymous donors, in line with local laws, and warns me against buying “known” donor eggs. “Some of the [non-anonymous donors] are a scam — they show you a girl’s picture, but maybe she is not available. They will give you eggs from a woman who looks similar.”
The global human egg market operates on a huge scale: in 2024, Bloomberg calculated that a human egg is extracted roughly every 15 seconds somewhere in the world. Northern Cyprus is just one corner of an international network comprising donors, clinics and a huge number of recruiters and middlemen. Some of the agencies now operating in the territory moved from Ukraine soon after the outbreak of war in 2022, when cylinders of frozen human gametes were rushed out of the country like precious mini refugees.
Who is taking responsibility for the surrogates?
One Ukrainian customer rep, “Maks”, tells me he is a doctor who has made a new life for himself and his family in northern Cyprus. His medical background, he says, informs his present job, although he seems to spend much of his day sending me emails with new discounts. The fact that he works on commission is painfully obvious. Later, I learn that his agency has no physical presence on the island, no office — it is “just a commissioning agency”, sending cases to a separate agency for them to handle on the ground after preparing the contracts and taking a cut. While I doubt that this is explicitly illegal in northern Cyprus, I worry about who is taking responsibility for the surrogates they employ.
The many British patients at northern Cypriot clinics come for just one thing: gender selection, which is illegal in the UK. I get a sense of this a couple of months after the Dublin event when I attend the London Fertility Show at Olympia. I ask a different embryo courier company to quote me a price to transport my eggs from London to northern Cyprus. “Sex selection, right?” the rep asks, beaming widely.
Back in northern Cyprus, I am introduced to a local businessman, “Latif”, who has recently started up an IVF clinic on the outskirts of Nicosia. He knows I am a journalist and is just as interested in the information I can give him about his rivals as I am in his insider intel — I start to feel like I am getting involved with something like a cartel.
Latif is dissatisfied with local donors, he tells me; recently, embryos made from their eggs have been failing transfer attempts at his clinic. He has heard a rumour that local donors sell their egg-stimulating medications in Turkey (where most of them are produced anyway, and later sold to other markets such as Georgia). The donors then buy cheap Chinese alternatives to take instead.
I also ask the agencies about surrogacy options. The Ukrainian rep, Oksana, quotes me €32,000-€75,000 for a surrogacy programme, depending on how many rounds of IVF and how many embryo transfers I want to pay for upfront, and whether I would be using my own eggs or donated ones. Oksana explains the merits of the higher price bracket: “Seventy-five thousand euros is for guaranteed child in two years. If no child, we give you back money. If you pay all money at once, we discount 10 per cent.”
A woman holds one of her twin daughters born to a Ukrainian surrogate mother in the city of Uzhgoro, April 2011 AFP
A rival agency offers the same terms for €88,000, while some agencies offer me a basic surrogacy programme including two embryo transfers (ie no “guaranteed child”) for a mere €27,700 (though I discover that extremely cheap programmes like this often entail “extra” charges as the surrogacy progresses, which the parents are effectively forced to pay). I try to calculate how the agency sets prices in multiple transfer attempts with multiple surrogates. A surrogate who did not get pregnant after a couple of initial embryo transfers with one set of clients would presumably be offered to other clients to save the agency a wasted return journey — I wonder how long she’s kept on the island, thousands of miles from home, until she is impregnated.
Oksana explains that as soon as I sign the contract they would try to match me with a suitable candidate, offering me two or three to choose from. (She suggests two months to source the right candidate. Rival rep Maks, who claims that his agency’s pool of girls are reliable, “without drugs or alcohol”, promises me that “she will be ready tomorrow”.)
At one point in our conversation, Oksana clearly becomes confused by the level of detail I want — how much contact would I have with the woman carrying my baby? How would I know how the pregnancy was going? Would I see medical reports? Could I talk to the surrogate?
“It doesn’t matter what she looks like because she just carries the child,” she explains patiently. “Main thing is that she is healthy. We can organise video call with her if you like; your coordinator will arrange.” I keep asking questions. Sensing scepticism or fear, perhaps, or suspecting that I am after a cheaper deal, Oksana seeks to reassure me. “If you like, you can arrange yourself the surrogate giving birth in your home country. You arrange her visas and flights, the birth. She will live in your house — you save money on accommodation.”
This blows my mind — the idea that I could arrange for a woman carrying my child in central Asia to fly to the UK on some kind of possibly spurious visa, stay in my house and give birth in an NHS hospital. How many people choose this option to theoretically save money or preserve the illusion of control? How could the agency ensure the surrogate was treated well? What if I were unable to arrange her visa in time for the birth — what would happen to the surrogate and the baby?
Maks assures me that the surrogate would not get paid beyond basic expenses until she gave birth and then signed away her rights to the baby. He is trying to reassure me that the surrogate would not make off with both my money and my baby, but all I can think about is how the surrogate was essentially in a hostage situation — so far removed from the position enjoyed by American surrogates, paid regularly from an escrow account.
Many British clients come for just one thing: gender selection, which is illegal in the UK GETTY IMAGES
In London, I speak off the record to several agents operating in northern Cyprus and Georgia. One tells me about some clients of his who changed their mind about wanting the baby, giving it up for adoption in Tbilisi soon after the birth. “That nearly broke me,” he says.
Back in northern Cyprus, Hasan, an overworked, friendly man in his forties, greets me in the offices of the firm he opened 20 years ago, fresh out of his Bar exams. As I arrive, a gay Irish couple are leaving. One of them tells me excitedly that they are expecting twin boys and a girl, from two different surrogates, all due in June. I wish them luck and notice a bottle of Jameson whiskey, which has (presumably) been left as a gift.
I ask Hasan which visas the surrogates come in on — do they have to pretend to be tourists? “No!” He looks affronted. “They come on medical visas. The most important issue for northern Cyprus is health tourism. It is not secret that the surrogates are doing an embryo transfer.”
Bad press is affecting demand
The transparency of this part of the process surprises me: surrogates are issued with an invitation from the IVF centre, which gets them their medical visa, which can then be renewed if the transfer doesn’t work or extended for as long as needed — the previous limit was 30 days but it has now been extended to 90, which I take as a possible sign that the authorities are making things smoother for the industry.
While Hasan says he is busier than ever, I have also heard that agencies are exiting northern Cyprus because bad press has been affecting demand, and also because of the infighting among the agencies. I pick up from Hasan that there is some fairly aggressive competition going on.
I arrange another meeting with the businessman Latif, who recently started an IVF clinic-cum-surrogacy agency and is navigating his way through the politics of the local market. We pop into his clinic — which looks professional, if relatively empty — and he describes his problems with competitors, wondering aloud how one of the Israeli surrogacy agencies that sent me egg donor files is so successful despite having no physical presence on the island and operating only in a commissioning capacity. “They are like Coca-Cola; they are everywhere. They don’t even need to advertise any more.”
While there are plenty of fertility patients and a high turnover of treatments in northern Cyprus, all the providers are jostling for a bigger piece of the pie. Sometimes alliances between clinics and agencies shift, secretly, and staff are poached. I wonder how this culture affects the surrogates who put their trust in them, and tell Latif I’d like his help in meeting some surrogates. “I will ask Natalya to meet us for a coffee,” he says eventually. “She is Georgian. She speaks Turkish. She is a good lady.”
I learn that this is Natalya’s third surrogacy at Latif’s clinic. She is waiting to undergo an embryo transfer, staying in an apartment rented for her on the outskirts of Nicosia. Latif sends me the location of a supermarket café nearby. I jot down some questions, thinking about how to word them as sensitively as possible and hoping that I’ll get a chance to talk to Natalya in Turkish alone.
I drive to the supermarket, park and sit in the café. Twenty minutes pass. Eventually Latif arrives alone, flustered.
“I could not persuade her, Alev. I’m really sorry.”
He shows me their text exchange on his phone — she is apologetic, using formal Turkish to explain that she does not feel comfortable about meeting a stranger. “Don’t take it the wrong way please,” she writes. I feel bad about putting her in this position, and wonder about her reluctance, which might well be fear — it feels like trying to meet someone in a witness protection scheme.
The morning after I first checked in to my hotel in northern Nicosia, an elderly woman made me an omelette. She asked me what I was doing in Cyprus and I searched the recesses of my memory for the Turkish word for “surrogate”. When I finally remembered, her astonishment was profound. “Turkish women do that?” No, I told her. Generally, the women come from central Asia or Georgia. She looked at me with obvious distaste. “They give their babies away?” Not really, I explained — the baby is not biologically theirs.
“Yes,” she insisted, grasping the folds of her belly. “I am a mother. If I carry a baby inside me, it has my blood. It is made with my blood. Is it not?” She looked at me with a kind of anguish. I’d never seen this kind of reaction until now — a reminder of the passionate convictions of the culture of my motherland and of the older generations in particular. As I left the hotel and walked to my meeting with a surrogacy lawyer, I reflected that this woman had no idea of the flourishing business on her doorstep.
Extracted from Cash Cow: How the Maternal Body Became a Global Commodity — and the Hidden Costs for Women by Alev Scott (HarperCollins, £22), which is published on February 26. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935
