Convicted paedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein worked with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to milk Nigeria’s terrorism crisis with a biometric surveillance contract, according to documents cited in newly released U.S. Department of Justice files and a report by Drop Site News.

As Nigeria confronted a wave of deadly attacks by Boko Haram terrorists in the 2010s, Messrs Epstein and Barak saw an opportunity to grow their wealth and establish their footprint in Africa through the sale of high-grade biometric surveillance technology.

The equipment was produced by FST Biometrics, a firm co-founded by Mr Barak and former Israeli military intelligence chief Aharon Ze’evi Farkash.

According to Drop Site News, the company aggressively courted Nigerian officials with a proposal to deploy facial recognition systems capable of identifying individuals from a distance and “filtering away all unwanted persons” from crowds, a pitch framed as a counterterrorism solution at a time when suicide bombings were rampant.

The surveillance system was eventually marketed and shipped to a university in Ogun state (Peoples Gazette has withheld the school’s name pending ongoing verification of its alleged involvement).

A press statement announcing the deal at the time described the technology as a critical tool to strengthen campus security. Hundreds of university staff members were trained to operate the equipment.

Although the sale was framed as an effort to counter terrorism, Drop Site News said it was in fact a decoy to establish the Israeli company’s presence in Nigeria and subsequently explore its vast oil resources.

“A hidden motive behind the security deals was the promise of accessing Nigeria’s rich petroleum resources,” DSN reported. “Barak’s hacked emails, published by Distributed Denial of Secrets and thoroughly corroborated by recent releases from the Justice Department’s Epstein Files, show Barak parlaying his Nigeria security relationships into oil investment opportunities, with Epstein’s steady guidance.”

According to the report, Mr Barak promoted the Israeli surveillance system as “field-proven”, saying it had been successfully deployed at the Erez Crossing between Gaza and Israel to track Palestinian workers.

In 2020, the university deal paid off when another company that Mr Barak co-founded secured a World Bank subsidy to bolster Nigeria’s national cybersecurity.

Mr Barak, through Mr Epstein’s connections, was invited to Nigeria as a keynote speaker at the World Cyber Security Conference, paving the way for his private meeting with then-President Goodluck Jonathan and other senior Nigerian military chiefs in June 2013.

The Israeli prime minister dissociated from Mr Epstein’s crimes last week, claiming he was not aware of the nature of the crimes.

“I did not know the manner of his crimes until 2019, and you probably didn’t know it either,” Mr Barak said on Israel’s Channel 12 on February 13.

On Friday, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem resigned his decades-old CEO and chairmanship role at Dubai’s DP World over his salacious email exchange with Mr Epstein recommending a Japanese spa where a masseuse offered “facesitting” and “ejaculation by hand massage” at premium rates.