An Israeli drone company, malaria testing technology, and the proposed sale of an American billionaire’s oil and gas empire are among the many previously unknown business ventures that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak discussed with the late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, leaked emails reveal.

Epstein served as a trusted financial adviser, fixer, concierge, sounding board, and even friend to the ex-Israeli leader during a long-running relationship that blurred professional and personal boundaries, the emails suggest.

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While Barak has previously acknowledged having a business relationship with Epstein via the Israeli emergency services startup Reporty, the communications suggest that the politician coordinated with the disgraced financier on several previously unknown business proposals, relying heavily on his advice and connections.

Barak, who led Israel from 1999 to 2001 and served as the country’s defence minister from 2007 to March 2013, also sought Epstein’s input on drafts of newspaper op-eds and used an apartment in New York City arranged by the financier to write his autobiography.

The two men also exchanged holiday greetings, and Epstein sent his condolences to Barak when his mother passed away in 2013.

Like many powerful figures in Epstein’s orbit, Barak, who said he first met the late financier in 2003, continued his association with Epstein for years after he became a convicted sex offender following a controversial plea deal in 2008.

The emails, which span 2013 to 2016, were published in August by the whistleblower site Distributed Denial of Secrets after being stolen by the hacktivist group Handala, which the government of Canada has linked to Iran’s intelligence agencies.

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Barak did not respond to requests for comment sent to his personal email address and those of his lawyers and publisher.

Barak’s prospective business partners in the various deals he discussed with Epstein also did not respond to requests for comment.

Just months after Barak ended his tenure as Israel’s defence chief in 2013, Epstein promised to make the politician hundreds of millions of dollars in an email flexing his skills as a financial adviser.

“We both know that with my involvement at a senior level you will be able to achieve, not so many but at least few hundred million more than without my help. To date you have not made a real proposal, and though I am happy to move forward I would need a firm serious offer to do so,” Epstein wrote to Barak in the email dated September 20, 2013.

That November, it appears that Epstein sought to renegotiate the terms of an agreement for his financial services following a delayed payment.

“I think best that after this is received we look to form a new arrangement that meets both of our needs,” Epstein wrote.

Epstein, who indicated in their correspondence that he had already been paid at least $5m, proposed that he receive a $2m annual retainer plus a percentage of profits.

It is unclear what terms, if any, the two men ultimately agreed upon.

Among the projects that Barak appears to have sought Epstein’s advice on was a proposed investment in Israeli startup Light & Strong, which in 2014 was working on solar-powered, high-altitude, long endurance (HALE) drones in an initiative dubbed “Project Sun Spark”.

Founded in Israel in 2007, Light & Strong produced military and aerospace components for the Israeli state and defence industry.

Two Israeli businessmen, Ofer Amir and Gal Erez, bought the company from a liquidator in 2014 after a previous owner went bankrupt.

Amir and Erez hoped that Light & Strong could rival Google and Facebook with solar-powered drones capable of boosting mobile phone and broadband coverage, according to a company prospectus. The drones also offered a secondary use for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, the emails show.

“They would like me to join as Chairman and to consider invest up to $1M based on $13M pre money as part of a round that will raise $3.0M ($16M post money valuation),” Barak wrote to Epstein in October 2014 after he was approached by Amir.

Epstein and his lawyer reviewed the company’s financial statements over a flurry of email exchanges with Barak over the next few weeks before Epstein issued a hard “no” on the investment.

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“this is crazy. the people writing this have no financial knowledge. they write for ex that this cashflow does not include depreciation.???? of course not. deprecitation has nothing to do with cashflow  nothing. STAY AWAY,” Epstein wrote in a typically error-strewn email on November 27, 2014.

Light & Strong was later acquired by an Indian aerospace conglomerate, according to Israeli media.

Epstein’s advice took a similar tone when Barak asked about a potential deal with the late Denver, Colorado-based oil tycoon Jack Grynberg.

Barak’s emails indicate that he felt a personal affinity for Grynberg, who had shared his experience of surviving the Holocaust as a child before making a multibillion-dollar fortune in oil and gas.

A judge later found that Grynberg, who died in 2021 aged 89, “suffered from insane delusions and failed to make rational decisions” in the waning years of his life as he tried to keep his fortune out of the hands of his family.

Grynberg engaged Barak in 2014 to help broker the sale of one of his oil and gas companies, Gadeco LLC.

The oil tycoon proposed offloading a 25 percent stake in the company for $400m, or a 100 percent stake for $1.6bn.

Barak agreed to help broker the deal for a 5 percent commission – to be divided among himself and business associates – and suggested two “Chinese and Russian candidates”.

Barak’s emails show that in October 2014, he approached China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the Israeli-Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, and Hong Kong entrepreneur Joachim Chao, who was representing a “consortium of Chinese private companies”.

The emails also suggest that Epstein helped Barak approach the staff of Leon Black, the billionaire cofounder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, about the sale.

Barak asked for Epstein’s advice in late October in a series of emails with the subject line “JG Co. Sale”.

“Hi Jeff Thx for your support. Pl share with me your impression from the JG Co. Materials once you’ve looked through them. Do not hesitate to correct or direct me along the way. I don’t have enough time to learn from my own mistakes,” Barak wrote.

‘Total waste of your time’

Epstein told him to avoid the sale at all costs a few hours later.

“This is total 100 percent BULLSHIT. I told you on the phone before sending or asking anyone about it you should do your own homework, You cannot be seen to be selling garbage ,frauds. Bad things and or trouble,” Epstein wrote.

“This is a total waste of your time. Call me when awake.”

Two days later, Barak emailed Epstein to thank him for his advice and inform him he had “softly killed the GADECO story”.

In early November, Barak informed Grynberg he could no longer help with the sale, but by the middle of the month, negotiations with Chao were back on, according to the emails.

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Negotiations with Chao appeared to fizzle out by December, and the sale did not proceed.

Grynberg later lost control of his business empire in 2019 following a successful lawsuit by his family.

Epstein played a supporting role for Barak in other ways, including by offering his Manhattan home to host business meetings.

Those meetings included a September 2013 encounter between Barak and Boris Nikolic, a biotech venture capitalist and then-chief adviser for science and technology at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

At the time, Barak sat on the advisory board of the Israeli biotech startup Parasight, which was developing a platform to test blood for malaria and parasites.

Barak solicited Nikolic’s feedback on the technology, which was undergoing clinical trials in India, in the hopes that the Gates Foundation might invest in Parasight, later renamed Sight Diagnostics.

Nikolic later passed on the opportunity, telling Parasight that the Gates Foundation was avoiding “machine-based technology” due to the difficulty of deploying it in remote parts of Africa.

Epstein often steered Barak to reach out to high-profile individuals spanning politics, business, academia and entertainment, or in many cases offered to connect Barak himself.

The list included then-president of the Maldives Abdulla Yameen; former French President Nicolas Sarkozy; outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg; former Harvard President Larry Summers; billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel; public intellectual Noam Chomsky; and film director Woody Allen.

It is unclear how many of these meetings took place.

One event that did go forward, however, was a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013 while Barak was in Moscow.

“I think you should let Putin know you will be in Moscow. See if he wants private time,” Epstein wrote to Barak in May of that year.

Epstein and Barak both hoped to convince Putin to abandon his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and help bring an end to the Syrian civil war, according to an investigation by Drop Site News that reviewed the same trove of emails.

Acting as a backchannel for the Israeli government, Barak met with Putin in June 2013, but he failed to sway him.

Another important connection for Barak was the billionaire French banker Ariane de Rothschild, whose relationship with Epstein was also reported on by Drop Site news.

Epstein advised Barak on how to approach the banker, the emails show.

De Rothschild had previously told Epstein that Barak would need to “build a relationship” with her if he wanted “to make serious money”, according to Epstein’s account of the conversation.

“I’m ready. But I need your advise re HOW? ( ladies is your forté),” Barak wrote to Epstein on November 21, 2013, in reference to De Rothschild.

“time.  attention.  stable. recurring.,  PREDICTABLE  where  what when,” Epstein replied a few hours later.

Epstein also suggested in a June 2014 email to Barak that De Rothschild’s foundation had unspecified problems with the Israeli government that the politician should be briefed on.

Around this time, Epstein was pursuing Rothschild to fund Israeli “offensive cyber” startups, according to Drop Site News.

Barak shared similar interests, including in the Israeli cloud security startup Guardicore. He suggested in August 2014 that Epstein pass a one-page backgrounder on Guardicore to PayPal.

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It is unclear whether Epstein followed his advice, and Guardicore was later acquired by cloud service provider Akamai Technology.

Barak’s correspondence with Epstein at times pointed to a deep personal friendship.

“[t]here are very few people that i enjoy spending time with,  you are unique,” Epstein wrote to Barak on September 21, 2013.

“Thx. The same. EB,” Barak wrote back.

Epstein gave Barak access to an apartment in New York, and on one occasion, arranged for the delivery of a piano to the property.

“We are in the apartment. So cute. And your team prepared it with so much attention to details. Thank you very much. It is so helpful for this task of writing a book,” Barak wrote on July 25, 2015.

Epstein also invited Barak and his wife, Nili Priel, to visit his private island, Little Saint John, in the Caribbean.

Barak shared a potential travel itinerary with Epstein to visit his island in January 2014, but that trip appears to have been cancelled.

In December of that year, Barak’s wife shared a new travel itinerary to travel to St Thomas, an island close to Little St James, with Epstein.

“we can arrive to St. Thomas Friday, December 12 from NY at 12:55 PM with AA 1275 And leave on Monday, December 15 at 2 PM to NY with AA 1275. Does this suit you?” she wrote in an email forwarded to Barak.

The following week, Barak thanked Epstein for his “hospitality” and complimented him on his “Great, impressive island”.

Barak referred to the visit again in a February 2015 email to Epstein that mentioned a bodyguard who joined the former Israeli leader in “LSJ on the second day”.

After Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in 2019, Barak announced that he had “cut all ties” with his former business partner.

In a 2023 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Barak adamantly denied attending any of Epstein’s “parties or activities involving girls and women”.

The leaked emails show that Barak had been approached years earlier for comment about his knowledge of Epstein’s activities.

In 2015, The Mirror newspaper contacted Barak to give him a chance to comment on whether he was aware that his business partner was “paying underage girls for sex”.

In a letter sent through his lawyers, Barak denied any knowledge of criminality by Epstein.

“As to your question about my awareness of Mr. Epstein’s activity, you are assuming allegations as fact and, even if the allegations turn out to be true, I was never aware that Mr. Epstein, to quote you, ‘was paying underage girls for sex.’”

The Mirror ultimately did not publish an article about Barak’s ties to Epstein following its correspondence with the politician.

While Barak’s relationship with Epstein opened up a world of elite connections and business opportunities, it overshadowed his aspirations for a political comeback in Israel.

At the time of Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, Barak was seeking to challenge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in upcoming elections under the banner of the newly formed Democratic Union, an alliance of left-leaning parties.

One month later, Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in what was later ruled a suicide.

That September, Barak failed to win a seat in the Knesset – Israel’s legislature – when his alliance underperformed in the polls amid renewed scrutiny of his ties to Epstein.