Thiel Spokesman Denies Former Israeli PM’s Claim Jeffrey Epstein ‘Co-Owned’ Palantir Founder’s Venture Fund – But Confirms Epstein was a Limited Partner

The Metropolitan Police investigation into Peter Mandelson over the leaking of sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein has established an unambiguous principle: those who seek to compromise the UK’s secrets to a foreign intelligence-linked sexual predator forfeit their access to power.

Mandelson was sacked as US Ambassador, resigned his membership of the Labour Party, and was forced to quit the House of Lords over ongoing revelations about his relationship to Epstein.

He now faces potential criminal charges for misconduct in public office.

Yet, the same convicted sex offender who received state secrets from Mandelson, was described by former Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister Ehud Barak as an ‘owner’ of a Silicon Valley venture fund controlled by Peter Thiel.

Thiel is the billionaire co-founder of defence analytics giant Palantir Technologies, which holds more than £670 million in UK Government contracts spanning nuclear weapons systems, NHS patient records, Ministry of Defence operations, and police intelligence databases.

In a communication with German technology investor Nicole Junckermann – released as part of the Epstein Files – Ehud Barak asked Junckermann to attend a meeting with Valar Ventures executives “who are seniors in a new Investment Fund owned by Peter Thiel and JE [Jeffrey Epstein]”.

The email shows that Epstein and Barak planned to pitch an Israeli tech surveillance firm, then called “Reporty”, later renamed Carbyne, to Valar Ventures.

In 2018, Thiel’s other venture, Founders Fund, invested in the Epstein-Barak firm.

A spokesman for Peter Thiel denied that Jeffrey Epstein was a co-owner of the fund with Thiel, but confirmed to Byline Times that he was a limited partner.

More than 100 documents from the Epstein Files released by the US Department of Justice, seen by Byline Times, reveal that Peter Thiel personally solicited and maintained a business partnership with Jeffrey Epstein that stretched from 2014 through 2019 – all the way up to Epstein’s final arrest.

During this period, internal documents and communications confirm that Epstein was a significant limited partner investor in a fund managed by Thiel’s Valar Ventures firm, receiving “confidential” and “time-sensitive” investment opportunities, facilitating meetings between Thiel and Russian intelligence operatives, and building what former MI6 Russia desk head Christopher Steele assessed as a fortune originating from Russian organised crime.

The timeline reveals a concerning convergence.

Peter Mandelson leaked the UK’s secrets to Epstein between 2009 and 2010.

Four years later, Thiel urged Epstein to meet the principals of his firm, Valar Ventures, with a view to confirming Epstein’s multi-million investment.

The following year, Epstein invested $15 million in Valar Ventures and became a limited partner in a Valar Ventures-managed fund.

In 2018, Thiel’s firm Palantir hired Mandelson’s lobbying company, Global Counsel, to facilitate its penetration of UK Government contracts. At the same time, Epstein remained an active Valar partner receiving confidential investment opportunities from Thiel’s fund and responding to opportunities suggested by the Valar principals.

If Peter Mandelson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein disqualifies him from holding power, why does the company controlled by Epstein’s business partner retain access to the UK’s most sensitive national security infrastructure?

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The Thiel-Epstein Business Partnership

Documents seen by Byline Times reveal the depth and duration of Peter Thiel’s personal business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

It was a partnership that continued years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. The documents contradict Thiel’s suggestions that he was not close to Epstein.

Until the release of the Epstein Files, little was known about Epstein’s investment in a major fund founded and chaired by Thiel, with this being characterised as a distant association. However, the documents show that Epstein quickly – but secretly – became a major investor in Thiel’s fund.

On 15 November 2014, Thiel personally emailed Epstein, soliciting $10 to 20 million for Valar Ventures – a venture capital fund Thiel had founded to invest in fintech and financial services companies globally.

A meeting in December 2014 was arranged at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse with Thiel’s principals, Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald. This is the same property that would later become notorious as a location where numerous women said they were sexually abused. Email correspondence between Epstein and Nicole Junckermann shows that she also attended this initial meeting.

By June 2015, Epstein had committed a large sum, $15 million, through his Southern Trust Company as a limited partner in a key Valar Ventures fund.

A limited partner contributes capital and gains a beneficial ownership in the fund in exchange for a share of profits, but is not involved in day-to-day operations or management. Their ownership in the partnership is relative to their interest, which depends on the amount of their investment.

However, the former Israeli Prime Minister’s email ascribing joint ownership of the fund to Peter Thiel and Jeffrey Epstein – denied to Byline Times as incorrect by Peter Thiel’s spokesman – reasonably suggests that Barak and Epstein perceived this is as a far deeper relationship than a mere passive investment.

Far from being a distant associate, internal Valar Ventures communications disclosed in the Epstein Files show that Thiel and his firm treated Epstein as an active premium partner in a manner that appears consistent with Ehud Barak’s depiction.

In June 2017, for example, Valar Ventures sent Epstein sensitive exclusive investment opportunities marked “super confidential”.

Thiel’s principals – McCormack and Fitzgerald, who had met Epstein at his New York townhouse in 2014 at Thiel’s behest – attempted to get Epstein to invest in Stash, a micro-investing app which now holds $3 billion in assets under management.

In November 2018, Thiel’s firm solicited additional capital from Epstein.

As late as March 2019 – just four months before Epstein’s final arrest on federal sex trafficking charges – Epstein’s accountant was asking for detailed portfolio information for “presentation to Mr Epstein”, as well as details on how much Epstein’s stake might face “dilution”.

The scale of Epstein’s investment in Valar Ventures grew significantly. The original $15 million commitment turned into some $40 million.

Epstein’s stake is now worth approximately $170 million – making it the largest single asset in Epstein’s estate, according to estate filings.

The Valar Ventures stake is currently held by ‘The 1953 Trust’, which Epstein signed just two days before his death on 8 August 2019. It is administered by Epstein’s long-time lawyer Darren K Indyke and accountant Richard D Kahn, who serve as co-executors.

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The Russian Intelligence Connection

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 Russia desk head, has provided a stark assessment of Jeffrey Epstein’s origins and allegiances. According to his expertise, Epstein’s fortune likely originated from the former Soviet Union and Russian organised crime.

The documentary evidence supports Steele’s assessment.

As Peter Jukes has reported in these pages, by 2015, Epstein recommended that Peter Thiel meet Sergey Belyakov – an alumnus of the Russian FSB spy academy who had served as Putin’s Deputy Minister of Economic Development before heading up the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, known as “Putin’s Davos”.

Following Epstein’s suggestion, Epstein put Belyakov in direct contact with Thiel, who asked his executive assistant to arrange an in-person meeting with Belyakov in July 2015.

Epstein also went on to arrange at least one meeting in October 2016 between Thiel and Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations and a veteran Kremlin operative.

When Churkin died suddenly in February 2017, Epstein emailed Thiel: “My Russian ambassador friend died. Life is short, start with dessert.”

That Epstein would facilitate meetings between Churkin and Thiel – during the period when Thiel’s Palantir was expanding its UK Government contracts – raises reasonable counter-intelligence concerns.

Thiel would later tell the Wall Street Journal that the meeting contained “nothing memorable” and that “I was rather naïve, and I didn’t think enough about what Epstein’s agenda might have been”.

The picture that has emerged from both the disclosed files and intelligence sources is that Epstein routinely provided advice to the Kremlin on circumventing Western sanctions; infiltrated Russian operatives into Silicon Valley technology companies under the cover of his sex trafficking network; used Russian banks (later sanctioned for money laundering) to process payments to trafficked women; and employed Russian women, including graduates of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, known for producing intelligence officers, as personal assistants.

By 2015, when Jeffrey Epstein invested $15 million in Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, he appeared to be operating well within the orbit of Russian intelligence services, as well as other agencies such as Israel.

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Mandelson: From Epstein’s Confidant to Palantir’s Facilitator

Between 2009 and 2010, while serving as Business Secretary in then Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Government, we now know that Peter Mandelson had leaked market-sensitive government information to Jeffrey Epstein.

Five years later, Epstein became a major limited partner investor in a fund managed by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, beginning a lucrative business partnership that would continue until his 2019 arrest.

That relationship had been privately characterised at the time by another business partner of Epstein’s, Ehud Barak – a former Israeli general and intelligence chief – as joint ownership; a description denied by Peter Thiel’s spokesman.

The previous year, however, Palantir Technologies – Thiel’s data surveillance company – hired Mandelson’s lobbying firm, Global Counsel. The explicit purpose was to position Palantir as a respectable partner to the British government.

At this point, both Thiel and Mandelson were intimately connected to Epstein, raising the question of how much Palantir’s leadership and indeed Thiel himself knew about the nature and extent of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein when they engaged Global Counsel.

The documented record shows that Global Counsel’s engagement with Palantir was not passive advisory work but active, high-level facilitation. In April 2018, Global Counsel brought former Health Minister Nicola Blackwood on board, where her work included providing Palantir with “political risk analysis.”

Matthew Swindells, who served as Deputy Chief Executive of NHS England until July 2019, joined Global Counsel just two months later in September 2019 – at which point he immediately began advising Palantir on NHS contracts.

Swindells would go on to chair Palantir’s health advisory board whilst simultaneously serving as joint chair of four prominent NHS hospital trusts, including Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, the first to pilot Palantir technology. (The trust said Swindells was excluded from Palantir-related decisions, though how such exclusion was enforced remains unclear.)

In December 2021, Peter Mandelson’s Global Counsel and Palantir jointly hosted a webinar on “the next steps the UK should take in realising the UK’s life sciences vision.” Swindells chaired the meeting. The webinar marked the formal release of a Palantir white paper that bore striking similarities to the NHS data strategy published six months later in June 2022.

Throughout this period, Mandelson maintained a financial stake in Global Counsel even after stepping back from day-to-day management. When Starmer travelled to Washington in February 2025 for a meeting at Palantir’s headquarters, it was Mandelson who arranged the Prime Minister’s visit through the British Embassy.

Less than seven months after that Starmer-Palantir meeting, in September 2025, Palantir won a £240.6 million Ministry of Defence contract without a competitive tender. Defence officials used a “defence and security exemption” to justify the direct award.

The full contract remains redacted. What the public knows is that Palantir’s software now processes data across “all security classifications” for “critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision making” throughout Britain’s defence apparatus, with systems designed to be “interoperable with NATO and other allied nations’ Palantir systems.”

Meanwhile, The Nerve has documented at least 34 Palantir contracts with UK government departments, agencies, and authorities, with a combined value exceeding £670 million. The true figure is likely higher, as multiple contracts remain unacknowledged or heavily redacted.

The deepest penetration has occurred in Britain’s most sensitive systems: the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), responsible for Britain’s nuclear warheads, holds Palantir contracts worth £15 million for cloud computing support of the nuclear weapons programme.

The pattern across all these UK Government contracts is consistent: minimal transparency, heavy redaction, direct awards without competition, and a revolving door of former officials moving from government positions into Palantir employment. The company has hired dozens of civil servants, NHS executives, police officials, and military personnel – including four Ministry of Defence officials in 2025 alone.

Peter Thiel, Andrew McCormack, James Fitzgerald, Valar Ventures and Palantir Technologies were contacted for comment, and this article will be updated with any response.

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The National Security Threat

The UK Government’s response to the Mandelson scandal established a clear principle: those who compromise Britain’s secrets to Jeffrey Epstein forfeit their right to access power.

The significance of this decision is heightened given the mounting credible evidence that Epstein was a vector for foreign influence operations, harbouring documented ties to senior Russian officials in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle – including Putin himself.

This same logic applies to Peter Thiel and Palantir Technologies. Thiel personally solicited, obtained, and maintained a business partnership with Jeffrey Epstein that stretched from 2014 through 2019. And both principals and staff of his firm, Valar, maintained a stream of regular communications with Epstein in that period, including regular efforts to pull in more investment from him. No less than a former Israeli Prime Minister who collaborated closely with Epstein for years described Epstein and Thiel as “owners” of the Valar fund.

Embedding Palantir into the UK’s most critical and sensitive systems represents an urgent national security risk precisely because its chairman, Peter Thiel, was a co-owner with a convicted sex offender operating as a vector for malign foreign influence, through whom he cultivated his own connections to senior Russian officials.

This is not a company that shares Britain’s values. It is a company controlled by a billionaire who actively partnered with a Russian intelligence-linked sex trafficker, and granted access to Britain’s most sensitive systems by a lobbying firm whose founder had compromised himself to that very same trafficker.

The British government moved swiftly to sever Mandelson’s ties underscores the extent to which his secretive intimate relationship with Epstein posed an ongoing national security threat.

The logic that removed Mandelson must now be applied to Palantir. Britain’s nuclear weapons programme, NHS patient data, military operations, and police intelligence should not be controlled by a company whose founder was Jeffrey Epstein’s business partner.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence told Byline Times: “We utilise a range of international suppliers based on operational requirements, including Palantir, who is a longstanding technology investor in the UK economy.

“There are robust processes in place to ensure government contracts are awarded fairly and transparently. All suppliers are subject to rigorous due diligence and must deliver value for money while complying with our security and legal obligations.”

Number 10 and the Cabinet Office were also contacted for comment.

The article was amended on 5 February 2026 to incorporate further details of Epstein’s limited partnership interest in Valar Ventures, clarify Ehud Barak’s claim of co-ownership between Thiel and Epstein, and record Thiel’s denial of Barak’s claim.