Convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak allegedly treated Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency as a business opening rather than a humanitarian disaster, using the chaos to market Israeli surveillance gear and win entry to the country’s oil and logistics markets.
Drop Site News (DSN) reviewed Justice Department emails and found that, while Nigeria fought the insurgents, Epstein and Barak pitched “field-proven” Israeli security tools to Nigerian officials—industry shorthand for technology battle-tested in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In one 2014 message, Epstein wrote Barak that unrest across Nigeria and the wider region was “perfect for you.” Barak answered, “You’re right in a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow.”
Biometric tech sold as counterterrorism tool
Barak put money into Israeli intelligence-linked firms whose products later reached Nigeria. In 2015 he and a partner invested $15 million in FST Biometrics, started by ex-military intelligence chief Aharon Ze’evi Farkash. Its Basel biometric system was first tried at the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza to monitor Palestinians.
As Boko Haram attacks spiked, Barak helped sell similar gear to Babcock University in Nigeria, billing it as a way to “filter away all unwanted persons.” The deal opened the door for wider Israeli cyber influence; by 2020 the World Bank had brought in Israel’s National Cyber Directorate and a Barak co-founded startup to help design Nigeria’s national cyber framework.
Security as gateway to oil and ports
Beyond surveillance, the files show security cooperation was meant to unlock Nigeria’s oil and port assets.
