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NEW YORK — New leaks and congressional records are filling in one of the ugliest missing pieces of the Epstein story: not just who he partied with, but how a convicted sex offender positioned himself between a Rothschild-branded private bank, an ex–Israeli prime minister and the booming business of offensive cyberweapons.
A new investigation by Drop Site News, drawing on hacked emails from Ehud Barak’s inbox and documents released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee, shows Jeffrey Epstein acting as a go-between for:
Ehud Barak, former Israeli prime minister and defense minister, who was actively investing in Israeli cyber firms.
Ariane de Rothschild, now CEO of the Edmond de Rothschild Group, a Swiss-based private bank long intertwined with Israeli state projects.
Swiss private banks already under scrutiny for money-laundering and tax-evasion failures, including Edmond de Rothschild Europe and Julius Baer.
Epstein — who pleaded guilty in 2008 to sex crimes involving a minor and was later charged with sex trafficking before his 2019 death in jail — wasn’t just circulating among professors and billionaires. He was helping map out how offshore wealth could fuel “NSO-like” spyware and offensive hacking tools coming out of Israeli military intelligence units.
The Barak–Epstein–Rothschild triangle
According to the Drop Site reporting, the story kicks into gear around 2013:
Barak, just out of the defense ministry, signs a lucrative “strategic adviser” agreement with Swiss bank Julius Baer, pitching them on attracting “Russian, probably Chinese as well as Jewish (non-US) capital” — explicitly courting politically sensitive money.
At almost the same time, Olivier Colom, a senior adviser to Edmond de Rothschild, emails Epstein to say it’s “too bad” Barak chose Julius Baer — signaling that Rothschild’s private bank also wanted to hire the former Israeli PM.
Epstein, the emails show, is the one tying those worlds together:
He has a close working relationship with Ariane de Rothschild, meeting her more than a dozen times, helping with hiring, buying nearly $1 million in auction items for him, and negotiating a proposed $25 million “risk analysis” contract between her bank and Epstein’s Southern Trust Company in 2015.
At the same time, he is coaching Barak on how to use donor-advised funds (charitable vehicles with big tax advantages) as a way to bankroll Israeli tech — including a small fund focused on telecoms, cybersecurity and biotech, nested inside a larger umbrella fund that Edmond de Rothschild could sell to global ultra-rich clients.
Barak and Epstein are not just talking philanthropy. Emails cited by Drop Site show their advisers sketching out an “offensive cyber” investment strategy:
A Unit-81 veteran (an elite Israeli military tech unit) sends Barak a Snowden-era NSA map of global computer exploitation and proposes building tools like NSO-style phone spyware, router-hacking implants and ways to surveil Tor users.
The trio discuss creating an “advanced cyber lab” to incubate these tools and spin them into companies that could quietly sell to governments and corporate clients.
Barak has publicly acknowledged doing tech business with Epstein and receiving “millions of dollars” of investment from him, including in a company later called Carbyne (formerly Reporty), an Israeli emergency-services/cybersecurity firm. He denies any wrongdoing and says he knew nothing of Epstein’s sex crimes.
Swiss banks with dirty-money baggage
One of the “holy shit” parts of this story is who Epstein and Barak were courting to back their cyber fund. Both of the banks in question have since run into serious trouble:
Edmond de Rothschild Europe (the Luxembourg arm of the group) became the first Luxembourg bank ever convicted of money laundering, agreeing in 2025 to a €25 million fine over its role in the 1MDB scandal.
The group also later entered a non-prosecution agreement under the U.S. “Swiss Bank Program,” paying $45 million and admitting that it helped U.S. clients hide billions of dollars in undeclared accounts.
Julius Baer, where Barak was a paid adviser, has been repeatedly hammered by regulators for anti-money-laundering failures. Swiss regulator FINMA sanctioned the bank over past corruption-linked clients; the U.K. fined it £18 million in 2022 for similar lapses; and in 2025 Reuters reported that FINMA ordered Julius Baer to disgorge more than 4 million Swiss francs for money-laundering control failures between 2009 and 2019.
The emails Drop Site cites show Epstein and Barak watching those enforcement actions closely — trading DOJ documents and congratulatory notes as the banks struck deals with U.S. authorities. In one 2016 email, Barak cheers Julius Baer’s settlement and DOJ forfeiture deal, calling it “Really Great!!!” while Epstein shares the U.S. civil forfeiture order.
By April 2016, Barak writes Epstein from Monaco that Julius Baer CEO Boris Collardi “is ready. Assured discreetness.” Barak then asks for “any news from AdR” (Ariane de Rothschild) — implying Epstein is trying to line up both the Rothschild bank and Julius Baer as quiet pillars of the same project.
There’s no public evidence so far that a full-blown “Rothschild-Julius Baer cyberweapons fund” was ever completed or launched. Drop Site is careful to note that it could not confirm what, if anything, ultimately came from these talks.
Hacked Barak inbox, House files and what’s verified
A big caveat here: many of the Barak–Epstein emails Drop Site relies on come from hacked inbox material published by a group calling itself “Handala.” Western outlets have reported that the group appears linked to Iranian state-aligned actors, and security analysts have warned that any such leaks need to be treated cautiously.
However:
Several key emails and calendar entries involving Epstein’s meetings — including his recurring appointments with Ariane de Rothschild and Ehud Barak — match documents previously reported by the Wall Street Journal from Epstein’s schedule and address book.
The latest House Oversight document dump on Epstein, released in October 2025, includes calendars and emails that corroborate parts of Barak and Epstein’s interaction timeline, including a planned dinner with Peter Thiel and Barak that Drop Site references.
At the same time, the House isn’t done. On November 18 the U.S. House of Representatives voted 427–1 to force the release of the so-called “Epstein files” — a huge cache of Justice Department records, including flight logs, travel records and investigative materials around Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The Senate and the Trump White House still have to sign off, but Trump has now publicly said he’ll approve the bill if it reaches his desk.
In other words: this story is landing while Congress is actively prying open the rest of the Epstein archive.
What we know — and what’s still allegation
Here’s the clean line between fact and allegation, based on multiple outlets and legal records:
Firmly documented facts
Epstein was a convicted sex offender who later faced sex-trafficking charges and died in jail in 2019.
Ehud Barak did business with Epstein and received millions in investment for his tech ventures, and later chaired Israeli emergency-tech company Carbyne.
Ariane de Rothschild’s bank negotiated a proposed $25 million contract with an Epstein company in 2015, and the bank later admitted its earlier public denials of any relationship with him were false.
Edmond de Rothschild Europe has been convicted of money laundering in Luxembourg over its role in the 1MDB scandal and agreed to a €25 million fine.
Julius Baer has been repeatedly sanctioned over anti-money-laundering failures, including a recent FINMA order to repay profits of more than 4 million Swiss francs and earlier U.K. and U.S. penalties.
The U.S. House has just voted overwhelmingly to demand release of Epstein-related DOJ files.
What’s supported mainly by leaks and one investigative outlet
The idea of an Epstein-brokered donor-advised fund aimed at Israeli cyberweapons, seeded by money from Rothschild and Julius Baer clients, is drawn from hacked Barak emails plus House-released calendars, as interpreted by Drop Site.
The emails cited by Drop Site show Barak, Epstein and advisers discussing “offensive cyber technology,” NSO-like tools and capital-raising strategies — but we don’t yet have independent mainstream outlets reproducing the full email threads or confirming the entire scheme.
All of the figures named — Barak, Ariane de Rothschild, Boris Collardi and their institutions — deny any knowledge of Epstein’s sex-trafficking crimes, and there is no public evidence that they participated in or condoned those abuses. Edmond de Rothschild has said Ariane only learned of Epstein’s behavior later and “feels for and supports the victims.”
Why this matters
Even with those caveats, the picture that’s emerging is brutal:
A convicted sex offender with deep ties to U.S. and Israeli elites isn’t just “networking” — he is helping structure vehicles to move offshore wealth into military-grade surveillance tech, shielded by the language of philanthropy.
Two private banks that were later nailed for money-laundering and tax-evasion failures were, according to these emails, being courted as key partners — at exactly the moment when Western democracies were claiming to crack down on dirty money and spyware abuses,
And this is all resurfacing just as Congress — after years of foot-dragging — finally agrees to pry open the rest of the Epstein files under overwhelming public pressure.
For anyone who cares about democracy, surveillance and captured institutions, this isn’t just another lurid Epstein subplot. It’s a case study in how unaccountable money, offshore finance and intelligence-adjacent tech all feed each other — often with the help of people we’re told to see as philanthropists, security experts or “rainmakers.”
The next question is simple and uncomfortable: if this is what we’re learning from one hacked inbox and a handful of congressional documents, what does the full, official Epstein archive still have to show us?