New disclosures map how Epstein and Ehud Barak leveraged African insecurity to market Israeli surveillance, influence ports, and deepen state ties.

Key Takeaways

• Newly released DOJ emails underpin reporting that Israeli officials coordinated security and access at an Epstein-linked Manhattan residence used by Ehud Barak.
• Drop Site News documents a Nigerian track where Boko Haram-era insecurity became an entry point for Israeli biometric and cyber tools tied to Barak’s business circle.
• A 2014 email captured the mindset bluntly: Epstein wrote, “Isn’t this perfect for you”?; Barak replied it was “not simple to transform…into a cash flow.”
• The reporting describes how “counterterrorism” pitches overlapped with commercial goals involving ports, logistics, and energy discussions around Lagos and Badagry.
• Reuters reported DP World’s Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem resigned amid scrutiny over Epstein ties, sharpening attention on the ports dimension of the network.
• The story widens beyond Nigeria, with Drop Site linking Barak-era security outreach and surveillance proposals to other African and Global South contexts.

Conflict as Access

Fresh reporting and newly surfaced records are forcing a harder look at the political economy of “security partnerships” in Africa—where insurgencies and instability can serve as leverage for outside actors seeking contracts, market access, and strategic footholds.

A Drop Site News investigation by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain, built on a tranche of emails released by the US Department of Justice, reported that the Israeli government installed security equipment and controlled access at a Manhattan apartment building managed by Jeffrey Epstein—beginning in early 2016 at 301 E. 66th Street—where former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak “frequently stayed for stretches at a time.”

The same Drop Site reporting line—expanded in separate coverage focused on Nigeria—described how Epstein and Barak’s relationship ran in parallel to commercial efforts tied to Africa’s conflicts, with Nigeria emerging as a pivotal theater where “counterterror” became a gateway: first into state relationships, then into higher-value economic terrain like ports, logistics, and cyber infrastructure.

Al Jazeera’s feature report, drawing on the same document trail, framed the arrangement as a model in which Israeli intelligence firms marketed tools as “field-proven”—a euphemism for systems deployed against Palestinians—then positioned them as solutions for Nigeria’s Boko Haram crisis.

The result is not a single “smoking gun” claim that resolves everything at once, but an increasingly coherent map of methods: use insecurity to open doors; use doors to sell surveillance; use surveillance relationships to reach ports, energy, and state-building projects; and rely on overlapping private and public channels to make the machine run.

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‘Ehud’s Apartment’

Drop Site’s Manhattan reporting is notable not only for who appears in the emails, but for what the emails describe as routine operational coordination between Israeli officials and Epstein’s staff.

The Drop Site investigation reported that the “security operation at ‘Ehud’s apartment’ was in place for at least two years,” with officials from Israel’s permanent mission to the United Nations corresponding regularly with Epstein’s staff regarding security.

The emails, as Drop Site summarized them, place Rafi Shlomo—then director of protective services at Israel’s UN mission and head of Barak’s security—in direct contact with Epstein employees to arrange meetings, coordinate the installation of specialized equipment, and manage access. Shlomo “personally controlled access to the apartment for guests” and carried out background checks on cleaners and Epstein employees, Drop Site reported.

A January 2016 email exchange cited in the Drop Site piece included language about the mechanics of the system itself. Barak’s wife, Nili Priell, wrote that, “They can neutralize the system from far, before you need somebody to enter the appartment. the only thing to do is call Rafi from the consulate and let him know who and when is entering.”

Another message quoted by Drop Site underscores how the physical work required Epstein’s sign-off: “Jeffrey says he does not mind holes in the walls and this is all just fine!”

The Israeli mission and Barak did not respond to Drop Site’s requests for comment, the outlet said.

The significance of the Manhattan material is structural: it portrays Epstein not merely as a disgraced financier with elite contacts, but as an operator with physical infrastructure—properties, staff, access control—capable of supporting sensitive relationships. That infrastructure matters when assessing how “private” intermediaries can end up serving state-adjacent objectives, especially when former officials and serving personnel appear in the same communications chain.

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The Nigeria Connection

In its Nigeria-focused investigation, Drop Site described a track that braided together insurgency-era fear, surveillance marketing, and commercial ambition.

Al Jazeera captured the underlying posture in a 2014 email referenced in the files. The reporting does not frame this as a theoretical debate. It presents an operational sequence: insecurity creates political demand; demand legitimizes foreign “solutions”; “solutions” generate access, which is then leveraged into broader deals.

Drop Site reported that in May 2015, Barak and his business partner, Gary Fegel, made a $15 million investment in FST Biometrics, a facial recognition/access-control firm founded by Aharon Ze’evi Farkash, a former head of Israeli military intelligence.

The technology’s lineage matters to how it was marketed. Drop Site reported that Farkash developed the concept of “remote identification” during the Second Palestinian Intifada at Israeli checkpoints on the Gaza border; in 2003, Israel deployed the “Basel” system at the Erez Crossing, using facial scans to identify and process Palestinians going to work in Israel.

In Nigeria, the same reporting describes how Boko Haram’s attacks—often framed through a sectarian lens—created a ready-made narrative for pitching biometric control at a Christian institution. Drop Site reported that a pilot was implemented at Babcock University, and by July 2015, an “in-motion identification” system was live, with staff training and promotional language emphasizing the filtering of “unwanted persons.”

Al Jazeera’s account similarly notes that a press release at the time boasted the technology would “filter away all unwanted persons,” presenting surveillance as safety while normalizing population-control logics in a crisis setting.

From there, the reporting argues, the foothold widened. Al Jazeera stated the emails suggest the initial “counterterror” entry helped institutionalize Israeli cyber expertise within Nigerian state structures, pointing to later cooperation involving the Israel National Cyber Directorate and a Barak co-founded firm, Toka, on national cyber infrastructure.

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The DP World Dimension

If the biometrics track shows how conflict opens the door, the ports track shows what can lie behind it: strategic infrastructure, long-term revenue, and geopolitical leverage.

Al Jazeera reported that the correspondence indicates security deals were “frequently utilised as a gateway for broader commercial interests,” including infrastructure projects tied to DP World.

Drop Site described Epstein facilitating conversations involving Jide Zeitlin—then chair of Nigeria’s sovereign investment fund—and DP World’s Sultan Ahmad bin Sulayem, in a context where control of ports around Lagos and Badagry was a central objective.

One email excerpt captures how this network discussed diplomatic normalization as part of deal-making ecosystems: “I hope your pal’s sojourn in Tel Aviv … was more effective than his efforts on the African continent,” Zeitlin wrote to Epstein in September 2018, referring to outreach that the report characterizes as cultivating Israel-UAE ties ahead of the Abraham Accords.

Reuters, reporting separately on fallout from the DOJ document releases, described the resignation of bin Sulayem as CEO and chair of DP World after his name appeared in Epstein files and scrutiny intensified.

Together, these pieces outline a grim logic: African insecurity supplies the urgency; surveillance supplies the justification; ports supply the payoff. Even when a specific contract fails or stalls, the relationship-building can persist—creating influence networks that outlast the crisis that opened the door.

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The Africa Pattern

A key theme across the reporting is how Israeli security technology—often developed in the context of controlling Palestinians—travels outward through private networks that can blur into official state action.

Al Jazeera notes that “field-proven” was a selling term for systems deployed under occupation. Drop Site’s Nigeria investigation provides the operational detail of how that translation occurred: from Gaza-border checkpoint systems to Nigerian campus deployments, then into state-level cyber relationships.

The Manhattan reporting adds another layer: a picture of state-linked security operations functioning inside an Epstein-controlled property, coordinated via Israel’s UN mission, and approved by Epstein himself.

For Africa, the most consequential question raised by the combined record is not simply whether Epstein knew powerful people—he did—but how conflicts on the continent can be turned into currency for outsiders: an all-purpose justification for surveillance systems, identity infrastructure, and cyber projects that can outlive the insurgency they were sold to defeat.

This is where the investigative trail now points: into contracts, procurement chains, “public-private” partnerships, and the quiet spaces where security doctrine meets commercial expansion—often with minimal democratic oversight and limited public visibility in the countries most affected.

(Drop Site News, Al-Jazeera, Reuters, DOJ Documents, House Oversight Committee records, Senate Finance Committee investigation files, PC)