(José Niño, Headline USA) Dropsite News reported that Jeffrey Epstein leveraged his personal friendship with a Swiss banking heiress to raise funds for Israeli cyberweapons development, according to newly released documents that reveal a far closer relationship than previously disclosed.
On July 31, 2019, just eleven days before Jeffrey Epstein was discovered dead in a Manhattan jail cell, his connection to the Rothschild banking dynasty became the subject of major public controversy.
Anonymous sources informed Bloomberg of a 2015 visit to Epstein’s New York mansion by baroness Ariane de Rothschild, CEO of Edmond de Rothschild Group, one of the largest Swiss financial institutions by assets under management. The bank’s spokesperson denied any relationship to the notorious American sex trafficker.
Four years later, after Epstein’s meeting calendars were leaked to the Wall Street Journal, the bank finally admitted that de Rothschild had met with Epstein as part of her “normal duties at the bank between 2013 and 2019.” Epstein provided introductions to U.S. finance leaders and helped de Rothschild personally on “a couple of occasions” with estate management advice, the bank disclosed.
Newly released documents reveal that Epstein and de Rothschild’s personal relationship was much closer than the bank previously acknowledged. According to emails released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee last Wednesday, Epstein planned to see a Broadway play with de Rothschild in January 2014 and scheduled a private trip with her to Montreal that September.
A second set of documents, the leaked inbox of former Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak, sheds light on Epstein’s efforts to leverage his friendship with de Rothschild to raise funds for Israeli cyberweapons development. After Barak’s retirement from government in 2013, he recruited Pavel Gurvich, a graduate of the Israel Defense Forces’ secretive Unit 81 technology unit, to source cyberweapons startups from the Israeli intelligence community.
Private communications between Barak and Gurvich show discussions about cyberweapons concepts inspired by the U.S. global surveillance apparatus revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Epstein pushed forward a plan to finance Israeli “offensive cyber” startups with the hope of winning de Rothschild’s support.
Epstein often played middleman, relaying messages between the banker and the former prime minister. In one note, Epstein passed along an offer from de Rothschild to Barak stating “if Ehud wants to make serious money, he will have to build a relationship with me. take time so that we can truly understand one another.” Barak asked for advice, deferring to Epstein’s supposed expertise on women. He wrote “I’m ready,” adding “But I need your advise re HOW? (ladies is your forté).”
Neither Barak nor de Rothschild responded to requests for comment from Drop Site News.
Whether the Rothschild bank ultimately participated directly in Epstein and Barak’s cyberweapons efforts remains unclear. However, in October 2015, de Rothschild negotiated a $25 million contract with Epstein’s Southern Trust Company, the same entity Epstein used to fund Barak’s intelligence linked security startup Reporty Homeland Security, now known as Carbyne, earlier that year.
According to a proposal reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the contract was for “risk analysis and the application and use of certain algorithms.”
House disclosures show that Epstein and de Rothschild remained close in the years before Epstein’s death. In a 2018 email exchange with former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, Epstein gossiped about de Rothschild’s marital issues with Benjamin de Rothschild, heir to the Rothschild fortune. He wrote to Ruemmler stating “ariane said ben giving her a very hard time, and did not know about tattoo…she said he wants her to do wife like things. ugh.” Ruemmler replied, “Barf.”
Ruemmler met Epstein when he reached out after she left the Obama administration on behalf of the Rothschild bank, asking if she’d represent them in an ongoing Department of Justice investigation into money laundering and tax evasion. Ruemmler accepted and helped negotiate a non prosecution agreement.
Barak and Epstein frequently discussed regulatory issues facing their Swiss bank partners as Epstein scouted opportunities to finance Barak’s cybersecurity enterprise. The email datasets show Barak and Epstein working on a partnership between Ariane de Rothschild and Boris Collardi, then CEO of Swiss bank Julius Baer.
Both banks were implicated in major tax evasion and money laundering investigations during the same period.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
