Epstein’s grubby trail in the DRC

A new Drop Site News investigation, published this week, has revealed emails originating from ex-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s Gmail account, linking Jeffrey Epstein’s network to destabilisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). 

The tranche of emails contains a classified proposal from former Mossad chief Danny Yatom’s firm. It describes how Israeli intelligence veterans trained a 150-member elite Congolese special operations force during the 2012-2013 war against the Rwandan-backed M23 rebellion in eastern Congo.

Yatom claimed the unit’s night raids and special operations had helped turn the tide of the war.

🚨How Jeffrey Epstein’s Israeli Network Shaped Congo’s Deadly Mineral Trade

Leaked documents reveal how military contractors linked to Israeli intelligence secretly trained a special operations strike force in mineral-rich eastern Congo.

New from @MazMHussain and @ryangrim…

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) June 24, 2026

The latest revelation confirms a pattern exposed by previous leaks. They lay bare the disgraced financier’s network links to the Israeli government, including intelligence agencies, and the exploitation of the Global South.

Barak was a close associate of the disgraced pedophile.

Other records, retrieved through an archive of leaked emails released by the Handala hacking group, details Barak’s and Epstein’s efforts to control oil, gas, and minerals across the African continent. According to Drop Site, this took place during the 2010s, leveraging Barak’s credentials as the widely respected head of the Israel Defense Forces.

Epstein’s grubby political links

This pattern of exploitation was not limited to Congo but extended into African countries, as previous documents released by the United States Department of Justice have shown.

In February 2026, Drop Site News reported that Epstein and Barak used the Boko Haram threat in Nigeria to pilot Israeli facial recognition technology. At the same time, they facilitated oil and logistics deals for the Emirati conglomerate DP World.

⚡️ NEW from @DropSiteNews: Epstein Flipped Israel’s Gaza-Tested Biometric Scanners Into Nigeria Ports Deal for UAE

Former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak used the Boko Haram threat to pilot Israeli facial recognition scanning in Nigeria, while Jeffrey Epstein facilitated oil…

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 16, 2026

They also revealed how Epstein and Barak explicitly discussed profiting from instability. In a 2014 email, Epstein wrote to Barak:

With civil unrest exploding in ukraine syria, somolia, libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you?

Barak replied:

You’re right in a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow.

The recurring theme across all these revelations is clear: Epstein’s network used security crises as entry points for resource extraction.

Bloomberg had previously reported that Peter Mandelson tried to involve Epstein in a deal to create a private bank. The goal was to manage the Republic of Congo’s oil funds, based on documents also released by the DOJ.

Coming back to DRC, Vox Ummah says that armed conflicts in DRC have been “managed by western powers, particularly the United States, creating the conditions for widespread destabilization and the breakdown of state protections and sovereignty.”

While Barak’s Israeli-trained forces were fighting M23 in the hills of North Kivu in the spring of 2013, western powers were simultaneously backing Rwanda’s assault on the DRC through the same M23 rebels.

This is the essence of imperialist double-play: training one side to fight while simultaneously supporting the other, ensuring the conflict never ends, and the plunder never stops.

Economist Jason Hickel has previously said:

The US props up the Kagame regime in Rwanda, which is actively destabilizing the DRC to prevent sovereignty over critical minerals that US tech and military firms require, and which the US wants to keep cheap and available for exploitation.

He has also called the US-backed recent peace deal between DRC and Rwanda “wild” and a heist on DRC’s minerals.

The US-brokered “peace deal” between the DRC and Rwanda is actually wild.

The US is getting access to $2 trillion worth of DRC minerals in exchange for forcing the withdrawal of Rwandan-backed M23 militias. That’s one-tenth of the DRC’s total mineral wealth, more than any…

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) June 29, 2025

Vox Ummah concludes:

As such, the United States is in no rush to implement any real ceasefire deal. Its intentional delays allow massacres to escalate across the region. The toll is heavy every day of the crimes committed by the M23 rebels backed by Rwanda and its partners.

While the deaths continue, American billionaires and companies continue to claim the mining squares and quarries, which also assists their “Israeli” allies in replenishing raw material to strengthen its military capacity. These very raw resources allow them to continue their criminal abuses against the Palestinians and other Arab/Islamic countries in the West Asia region. Indeed, these struggles are interconnected.

Epstein’s grubby links to DRC are a reflection of how the Western world treats people in mineral-rich parts of the world, especially the Global South, as disposable after destabilizing their lives.

Featured image via the Canary