#Erik Prince, on the sidelines of the recognition of Israel by the UAE.
Founded on 13 August .. the Gulf Business Council (GIBC), which is now looking to open an office in Dubai, does not simply want to play a role in the economic relationship between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv ..”

“which is already flourishing in the security and intelligence industry (IOL 858). The new entity is also looking to open up new business channels with CHINA, where GIBC's founder Dorian Barak has a number of projects in the works in the Middle East and Africa.”

“Among his other activities, Barak who has strong connections with the Chinese state-owned investment company Citic, and acts on behalf of American Erik Prince ..Last year Barak was appointed to head Frontier Strategic Capital (FSC), which is owned by Prince's ...

Frontier Strategic Resources (FSR), whose shareholders include Frontier Services Group (FSG) and Citic.
Barak has long been the partner and lawyer of Prince. Barak also had a role in Prince's 2013 bid to take a stake in the Austrian aerial

surveillance equipment manufacturer Airborne Technologies, in order to develop paramilitary aircraft, in association with former Australian Special Forces pilot
Christiaan Durrant, now active in Libya and Mozambique (IOL 855).
Around the same time, Prince had also wanted to

militarize agricultural spraying aircraft in the United States (IOL 774) , which prompted the FBI to launch an investigation in February into alleged violation of arms export regulations.

Barak is also close to the Chinese group Kuang-Chi, in the past representing it. “

And its subsidiary KuangChi Science in Israel. Part-owned by Tsinghua Univ., key in the development of Chinese military technologies, Kuang-Chi is a supplier of new technologies to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the security services (and was once in the FBI's sights)”

“Barak helped Kuang-Chi to invest in the Israeli facial recognition firm Eyesight Technologies in
2016. As well as both of them attracting the interest of the FBI, Prince and Kuang-Chi have other things in common. As noted by British journalist Wendy Siegelman on Twitter ..”

Prince's company and the Chinese group both invested in the Israeli startup Agent Video Intelligence (Agent Vi), which specialises in the detection and processing of video surveillance information for the police and intelligence services. Huawei's partner in China, Agent Vi is

also now targeting Gulf markets. KuangChi and Frontier share a director, Hong Kong businessman Johnson Ko Chun-shun. ..The investment in Agent Vi was made via Indigo Strategic Capital fund, which, as noted by Haaretz, Barak used to lead with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “

former chief-of-staff Avi Harow, who was convicted of fraud following the anti-corruption investigations in 2017.
Along with Israeli tech personalities such as former IDF officer and Arab-speaking entrepreneur Michael Bassin, and politicians such as Jerusalem's deputy mayor for

international relations, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, Barak has also brought close friend Lital Leshem, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, to the Gulf Israel Business Council. Leshem was the marketing director of the corporate intelligence firm Black Cube (IOL 829), in which

Barak tried to help Prince invest in. Leshem was also involved in launching Carbyne, formerly Reporty, a security startup founded by former Unit 8200 officer Pinchas Buchris. Israel's ex-prime minister Ehud Barak and US investors Peter Thiel and Jeffrey Epstein took shares in it”