Exclusive: The Night Kevin Rudd and Jeffrey Epstein Dined at a NYC Penthouse
It was February 2013 and New York City had been hit by one of the worst blizzards in living memory. Three to four inches of snow per hour had shuttered what is usually an un-shuttable city, but things were slowly starting to get back to normal.
“You're 71 years old, so you can't be in a business that takes twenty years to make money,” Jeffrey Epstein said at a gathering at his Upper East Side house. “You have to make money in the next three years.”
He was talking to the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak. He could speak so candidly and personally because the two had a long friendship. Barak had already announced he was leaving Israeli politics altogether, but with only one month to go before he officially exited Israeli parliament, he had come seeking advice from Epstein about what he should do next.
The conversation spanned global politics, technology and the future of Israel, but again and again it returned to one topic: how Barak could accrue personal wealth once he was out of politics.
“These beginning nation states, whether Mongolia or parts of Africa or even Kazakhstan, have a lot of money,” Epstein counselled. “But the sophistication is twenty, ten years back.”
The idea was only embryonic for Epstein back then, but over the next six years up until his death, Mongolia was one of Epstein’s principal concerns. He would serve on an advisory board to the Mongolian government alongside former Prime Ministers of Israel, Norway and Australia. He would regularly meet with Mongolian officials all over the world, he urged former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon to meet with the Mongolian president, and he would seek updates on Mongolian election results.
Osman Faruqi
It might be hard to imagine why Epstein, who was a convicted sex offender by the time of his 2013 conversation with Barak, would be interested in Mongolia of all places.
But after examining new tapes of private conversations and emails recently released by the Department of Justice, Lamestream can report on how Epstein and his associates saw the country as an opportunity to funnel vast amounts of money to Israeli security companies, US contractors and themselves.
The Opportunity Epstein Saw
Epstein’s interest in Mongolia is what thrust former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s name into headlines alongside the disgraced financier last week, when Rudd’s name appeared in Epstein emails and calendars that were been released by the US Department of Justice.
This week, Lamestream was able to reveal that Epstein attended a dinner at a New York penthouse in honour of the Mongolian president, which Rudd also attended. Rudd strenuously denies ever meeting Epstein or having any recollection of Epstein being present at the event. A few months after the dinner, both Rudd and Epstein joined a six-person board: the Mongolian Presidential Advisory Board, facilitated by a think tank called the International Peace Institute, which was financially backed by Epstein.
