US Politics
Epstein told Emirati billionaire he “loved the torture video” as lawmakers identify redacted names
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Paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein told an Emirati billionaire he “loved the torture video”, in a disturbing email exchange in the Epstein files.
Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem has been named as one of the “six wealthy, powerful men” whose identities had previously been redacted in the documents.
Epstein and Sulayem, CEO of international logistics firm DP World, appeared to have corresponded by email and texts for years, according to the files, discussing sex and sharing links to fetish sites.
In an April 2009 email to Sulayem, Epstein wrote: “where are you? are you ok , I loved the torture video.”
The recipient replied: “I am in china I will be in the US 2nd week of may”.
In texts from 2007, Sulayem emailed Epstein about his attempts to meet a supermodel.
According to a separate cache of emails obtained by Bloomberg, he wrote: “After several attemps [sic] for several months we managed to meet in NY. there is a missunderstanding [sic] she she wanted some BUSINESS! while i only wanted some P****NESS!”
In 2015, Sulayem had suggested visiting the financier with his family and sent him links to fetish porn websites, according to the files.
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He also emailed Epstein about his sexual experiences, with the paedophile sending Sulayem a link to an escort website in 2017.
The same year, Sulayem shared a copy of a passport belonging to a “personal masseuse” at Epstein’s “private spa”, asking for help in finding her work as a trainee at the Rixos hotel in Antalya, Turkey.
Images of the two billionaires together were also published in the files without context or dates, including one of them cooking in a kitchen.
Sulayem is a real estate developer from Dubai with an estimated net worth of up to $8bn. He has been CEO of DP World since 2016.
The firm is based in the UAE and works across cargo logistics, ports and maritime services. They claim to move 10 per cent of global trade daily.
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DP World employs 5,500 people in the United Kingdom, according to its website, and works across ports and freight rail terminals at London Gateway and Southampton.
The company is best known in the UK for buying P&O ferries in 2019. The group fired nearly 800 members of staff in 2022 without prior notice or consultations with workers’ unions.
Being named in the files does not suggest wrongdoing and Sulayem has not been charged with a crime in connection with Epstein. Searches suggest his name is included more than 5,000 times in the files.
The US Department of Justice allowed lawmakers access to the unredacted files for the first time on Monday, which led Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie to name Sulayem alongside five others on Tuesday.
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“Until tonight no one knew who sent the torture video to Epstein,” Republican congressman Thomas Massie wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “I went to DOJ, unredacted the email, and reverse searched the email to discover it was a Sultans [sic].
“Our law requires VICTIM’s information to be redacted, not information of men who sent Epstein torture porn!”
The DOJ is facing mounting pressure to release the remaining three million pages of Epstein files, and removing other redactions in the three million pages that have already been published.
“If we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those three million files,” Khanna said in a speech to the House of Representatives Tuesday.
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Jamie Raskin, the House judiciary ranking member who also reviewed the unredacted papers, said: “I was able to determine, at least I believe, that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions, in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims.”
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which became law in November, allows for certain withholdings and redactions, including to personally identifiable information about victims that would constitute a clear invasion of privacy; files that depict child abuse or images of death, abuse or injury; and information that would interfere with certain investigations, foreign policy or security.
The act prohibits redactions to save for embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure or foreign dignitary. All redactions must be explained in writing.
The Independent approached DP World and the US Department of Justice for comment.
