--- title: "The Research Fee" subtitle: "$2.3 million to a former Prime Minister. For research nobody will describe." description: "The Wexner Foundation paid $2.3 million to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, labeled 'research.' Both the Foundation and Barak refuse to say what the research was. Epstein signed the transfer forms. An Israeli investigator called it money laundering. The unsealed documents map the full pipeline." date: "2026-03-30" author: "Unsealed Research Team" image: "the-research-fee.jpg" color: "#1B5E20" tags: ["wexner", "barak", "foundation", "couq", "money-laundering", "israel"] series: "wexner-machine" series_title: "The Wexner Machine" series_order: 2 --- What kind of research costs $2.3 million? The Wexner Foundation won't say. Ehud Barak won't say. The transfer forms were signed by Jeffrey Epstein. And when an Israeli investigator flagged the payments as suspected money laundering, the FBI filed his letter and moved on. Here's what we know: between 2004 and 2006, the Wexner Foundation — a small Jewish leadership charity in Cleveland, Ohio — transferred at least **$2.3 million** to Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel. The money was classified as payment for "research." Nobody has ever explained what was being researched, and both parties have refused to disclose the subject.[1](#sources) That's the kind of silence that tells you more than any answer would. --- ## The Pipeline The money didn't travel a straight line. It ran through a pipeline that Jeffrey Epstein had been building for over a decade — and every stage of that pipeline passed through his hands. ### Stage 1: Epstein → Wexner Foundation ($9 Million) In 2001, Jeffrey Epstein — who held power of attorney over Les Wexner's entire fortune and fiduciary control over all his trusts and foundations — transferred approximately **$9 million** to the Wexner Foundation.[1](#sources) This is the part that stops making sense if you think about it for more than thirty seconds. Epstein, whose wealth was entirely derived from managing Wexner's money, donated $9 million to Wexner's own foundation. It's Wexner money, run through Epstein, deposited back into a Wexner entity — but now with Epstein sitting on the board as a trustee. In 1992, Epstein had persuaded Wexner to put him on the Wexner Foundation board.[2](#sources) By 2001, he was both a trustee and one of the foundation's largest donors. He controlled the money coming in and had authority over how it went out. ### Stage 2: Wexner Foundation → Ehud Barak ($2.3 Million) Between 2004 and 2006, the Foundation began transferring funds to Barak. The amounts totaled at least $2.3 million. The classification: "research."[1](#sources) Epstein signed some of these transfer forms personally.[3](#sources) Consider the timing. In 2004, Barak was out of office — he had resigned as Labor Party leader after his defeat in the 2001 election. But he was positioning himself for a return. He would re-enter politics and run for the Knesset, eventually serving as Defense Minister from 2007 to 2013. The Wexner Foundation payments landed in the exact window when a politician burns through cash rebuilding his base.[1](#sources) ### Stage 3: The Side Channel — COUQ Foundation ($21.2 Million) While the Wexner Foundation was paying Barak for phantom research, Wexner-controlled entities were pouring even larger sums into a parallel charity called the **C.O.U.Q. Foundation** — an organization that Epstein controlled outright. | Year | Source | Amount | |------|--------|--------| | 2002 | Wexner Children's Trust | $11,200,000 | | 2004 | Leslie H. Wexner Charitable Fund | $10,000,000 | | **Total** | | **$21,200,000** | COUQ was housed at **457 Madison Avenue, 4th Floor** — the same address as Epstein's consulting entity, New York Strategy Group.[4](#sources) Its bank accounts at JPMorgan received wire transfer instructions signed by Epstein. Its assets included interests in Bear Stearns Asset Backed Securities Overseas Ltd. — a Cayman Islands exempted company — and Second City Capital Partners, a Delaware limited partnership.[5](#sources) In plain English: Wexner's children's trust and personal charitable fund sent $21.2 million to a foundation that Epstein ran out of his own office, which held offshore assets in the Cayman Islands. The foundation bore the name of no Wexner family member, no established charity, no identifiable cause. Just four letters — C.O.U.Q. — and Jeffrey Epstein's signature on every wire. --- ## The Investigator On August 26, 2019 — six weeks after Epstein's arrest — the FBI's Cleveland Field Office received an email from **Erez Zadok**, an Israeli citizen who had been tracking the Wexner Foundation's payments to Barak. The FBI documented his report with clinical precision:[3](#sources) > ZADOK stated that the WEXNER FOUNDATION in Cleveland, OH, had appointed JEFFREY EPSTEIN as a trustee, EPSTEIN gave the WEXNER FOUNDATION approximately 9 Million USD. ZADOK also stated that the WEXNER FOUNDATION transferred at least 2.3 Million USD to Israeli former Prime Minister Ehud Barak; EPSTEIN allegedly signed some of these transfer documents. Zadok's own letter to the FBI, attached to the filing, laid out the case:[1](#sources) > "The amounts transferred to Mr. Barak were described as 'research', but Mr. Barak and the Wexner Foundation refuse to reveal the research issue or any other details." He continued: > "It doesn't make sense for a small charity fund such as the Wexner Foundation, to pay a relatively huge amount of money, for an unknown research. It doesn't make sense that a charity fund will refuse to reveal the issue and goals of such a research." Then the conclusion: > "The exception, weird and unusual payment from the Charity Fund to Mr. Barak, while he is running for the Israeli Parliament during that period, before it and after it, **looks like a forbidden political contribution.** Also there is a suspicion for **Money Laundering** violation, when Mr. Epstein uses The Wexner Foundation, to wire millions to Mr. Barak." An Israeli citizen read the public filings, did the math, and told the FBI that their registered sex offender was laundering money to a former Prime Minister through a Cleveland charity. The FBI classified the letter and filed it under the Epstein sex trafficking case. As far as the public record shows, that's where it stayed. --- ## The Relationship Barak wasn't a casual acquaintance who received a mysterious check. He was embedded in Epstein's daily life — deeper and longer than almost anyone else in the files. Epstein's calendars show Barak at the townhouse **constantly**. A single week in September 2013: Barak for lunch on Friday, followed by a Bill Gates dinner that evening. The next day, Barak again.[6](#sources) The month before, dinner with Barak and Steve Bannon.[7](#sources) Lunch with Barak and Larry Summers.[8](#sources) Epstein's master name lists — the to-do documents he emailed to himself cataloging his entire network — place Barak alongside Clinton, Prince Andrew, Leon Black, Larry Summers, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman.[9](#sources) He wasn't peripheral. He was core. And when the legal walls started closing in, Barak's name appeared in one of the most revealing documents in the entire archive. --- ## The Defense Strategy In January 2015, Epstein drafted a defense strategy and circulated it to Ghislaine Maxwell and journalist Michael Wolff. He proposed deploying a former girlfriend as a witness — someone who had traveled with him "almost everywhere, each house, on the plane many many times." Her job would be to deny specific allegations about specific people.[10](#sources) Point number five: > "She knows **Clinton was never on the island.**" Point number six: > "She knows **no sex with Steven Hawking**, she knows **no sex with Ehud** as he was also **never on the island.**" Barak was listed alongside Bill Clinton and Stephen Hawking in Epstein's core denial architecture. The fact that Epstein needed a rehearsed witness to specifically deny that Barak had sex with anyone on his island tells you exactly what the allegations were — and how seriously Epstein took them. Wolff's response was telling: *"I don't think I would put her out there. It probably seems too self-serving."* Even the journalist who arranged secret meetings for Epstein thought this was too transparent. --- ## The Recovery In August 2019, when Wexner finally went public about the relationship, he described himself as a victim. His letter to the Wexner Foundation claimed Epstein had "misappropriated vast sums of money." He said he had been "able to recover some of the funds" — specifically, about **$46 million** worth of securities transferred from COUQ and a Virgin Islands entity back to a foundation run by Abigail Wexner.[11](#sources) Wexner called this "a portion of the returned monies" and insisted: *"All of that money — every dollar of it — was originally Wexner family money."* Set aside for a moment whether you believe Wexner's claim to victimhood. Focus on the math. He put $21.2 million into COUQ. He recovered $46 million. That's a $24.8 million profit on a "misappropriated" foundation — which means the money Epstein was supposedly stealing was also growing. Whatever COUQ was invested in — Bear Stearns offshore vehicles, Cayman Islands structures, Delaware partnerships — it was generating returns. The real question isn't where the $46 million went. It's where the rest of the money went — the other investments, the other wire transfers, the years of "consultant" payments — and whether any of it ended up in places that would make the Barak transfers look like pocket change. --- ## What "Research" Means A small charity in Cleveland writes $2.3 million in checks to a former head of state. The checks are signed by a convicted sex offender. The money is classified as payment for research that neither party will describe. The charity's trustee put $9 million of his client's money into the foundation before routing it back out to a foreign politician. An independent investigator called it money laundering. The FBI filed the report and closed the folder. Meanwhile, the same sex offender was spending his evenings hosting the former Prime Minister for dinner alongside Bill Gates, Larry Summers, and Steve Bannon — and drafting legal strategies to deny that the former Prime Minister had ever been to his island. Nobody has ever explained what the research was. Nobody has been asked under oath. Nobody has been charged. In the Epstein files, "research" is a four-syllable word for "don't ask." --- *This article draws on the ["Absolute Control" — Wexner-Epstein Investigation](/reports/wexner-investigation) research dossier. It is the second in the [Wexner Machine](/articles?series=wexner-machine) series.* --- ## Sources & Documents 1. **EFTA01249854** — Letter from Erez Zadok to FBI, August 2019. Details Wexner Foundation→Barak $2.3M transfers, Epstein's $9M donation, "research" classification. [View →](/doc/EFTA01249854) 2. **EFTA01361575** — Vanity Fair, March 2003. Epstein persuaded Wexner to put him on the Foundation board in 1992; fiduciary over all trusts. [View →](/doc/EFTA01361575) 3. **EFTA01249848** — FBI FD-71A import form, August 28, 2019. Cleveland Field Office documenting Zadok's report on Wexner Foundation–Barak transfers. [View →](/doc/EFTA01249848) 4. **EFTA01486191** — JPMorgan bank statement. New York Strategy Group LLC at 457 Madison Avenue — Epstein's consulting entity. [View →](/doc/EFTA01486191) 5. **EFTA00301024** — COUQ Foundation Grant Agreement. Transfer of Bear Stearns Asset Backed Securities Overseas Ltd. (Cayman Islands) and Second City Capital Partners (Delaware). [View →](/doc/EFTA00301024) 6. **EFTA02127164** — Daily schedule, September 20, 2013. Ehud Barak lunch, Bill & Melinda Gates dinner at Epstein's townhouse. [Dossier reference] 7. **EFTA02239420** — Calendar, March 15, 2018. Dinner with Terje, Berge, Steve Bannon. [Dossier reference] 8. **EFTA02070327** — Schedule, October 2015. Barak lunch at 71st Street; Summers flies from Boston to join. [Dossier reference] 9. **EFTA02540965** — Master name list, January 8, 2018. Barak alongside Clinton, Prince Andrew, Trump, Summers, Black, Thiel, Hoffman. [Dossier reference] 10. **EFTA00866457** — Defense strategy email, January 16, 2015. Epstein to Michael Wolff. Ex-girlfriend to deny Clinton on island, no sex with Hawking, no sex with Barak. [Dossier reference] 11. **EFTA00172284** — New York Times, August 7, 2019. Wexner's letter: "misappropriated vast sums," $46M recovery from COUQ. [View →](/doc/EFTA00172284)