Noah Musingku

Noah Musingku was born in 1964 and came from Tonu, a small village in the Siwai area of South Bougainville, then part of the Australian administered Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Bougainville became part of the North Solomons Province of Papua New Guinea at independence in 1975. Musingku told Harper's Magazine that he was the last of eight children, and claimed to be "the lastborn of the lastborn of the lastborn" for fourteen generations; the reporter noted that the truth was unclear.

As a boy he joined Bougainville's Pentecostal movement, a faith that, in Sean Williams's words, put as much emphasis on financial reward as on liberation from daily trials. His schoolmate James Tanis, later president of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, remembered him as a "mysterious kind of student", enthralled by stories of "a beggar who became a millionaire". Musingku told classmates that his father had been a Japanese spy during World War II and had taught him to read palms. Tanis recalled that when a group of boys stole laboratory equipment to brew an invisibility potion from Musingku's recipe and were caught anyway, Musingku said they had made it wrong.

Musingku attended Buin High School in the late 1970s, where his classmates included Timothy Masiu, later member of parliament for South Bougainville, and James Tanis. He then went to Kerevat National High School on New Britain and served briefly in the Papua New Guinea Defence Force after graduating.

In the late 1980s he studied at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech) in Lae, taking agriculture and architecture courses that he never completed. Tanis recalled that he went to architecture classes in full military uniform and ran distance races holding a wooden stick like a rifle. He later studied political science at the University of Papua New Guinea, where he served as president of the National Union of Students in the early 1990s.

In the early to mid 1990s Musingku and his brother Messach Autahe set up the Pei Mure Association, a get rich quick venture with an invented backstory. Pei Mure, "the law of King Pei", was presented as the legal code of Papaala, an ancient kingdom from which Bougainvilleans supposedly descended, revived by a conclave of chiefs in 1922 together with plans for a global banking system. Researchers and reporters have found that Pei Mure and Papaala were fictional. In 1995 the brothers proposed a ten step peace plan for the Bougainville conflict that ended with paying them more than a million dollars. Both governments considered it and rejected it on cost and credibility grounds.

After the 1997 Asian financial crisis destabilised Papua New Guinea's economy, Musingku launched U-Vistract Finance Corporation in Port Moresby. It promised returns of up to 100 per cent a month and was sold with prosperity gospel sermons. Early investors were paid from later deposits, the classic pattern of a Ponzi scheme, and thousands more rushed to join. U-Vistract drew money from Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji and Australia, where Queensland investors put in about A$500,000 in 1999. Musingku even opened a branch of his Royal Reserve Bank of Papaala near the Bank of Papua New Guinea's headquarters.

Australian regulators shut down the Australian operation in 1999, Papua New Guinea revoked U-Vistract's licence, and in 2000 a court declared Musingku and the scheme insolvent. A liquidator found that at least US$20 million to US$30 million had passed through related accounts. Wider estimates run to K350 million from about 70,000 Papua New Guinean depositors, and Harper's reported a figure of about US$232 million.

Charged with contempt of court for continuing to promote U-Vistract, Musingku fled to Solomon Islands, where he was forced out, and around 2003 entered the Me'ekamui "no go zone" held by rebel leader Francis Ona near the closed Panguna mine. In May 2004, in a ceremony near Guava, Musingku crowned Ona king of Me'ekamui and announced the twin kingdoms of Me'ekamui and Papaala, with U-Vistract as their financial system. In April 2005 he hired Fijian mercenaries as guards.

After Ona died in July 2005, Musingku declared that Ona had handed him control and ruled from Tonu as King David Peii II (also styled King Upeii II). The compound gained a palace, a parliament, a chapel, a royal guard known as the Me'ekamui Defence Force and several self-declared banks. In November 2006 a column of former Bougainville Revolutionary Army fighters and police raided Tonu. Four of his guards were reported killed and Musingku was shot through the jaw. Fijian guard Maloni Namoli helped him escape into the jungle, and he returned about a month later.

In 2008 he launched the International Bank of Me'ekamui online and in 2009 the Bougainville Kina (BVK), banknotes bearing his own face. The Bank of Papua New Guinea warned the public not to accept the currency. Through deals with Western sovereign citizen networks, including the Internet Catalogue Club, at least 1,500 people abroad opened BVK accounts. In 2015 Musingku issued royal decrees calling the instruments he had received a fraud and extinguished those accounts. In 2023 he launched a foreign exchange app, since closed, and in 2025 announced a Universal Payout Program that never paid out.

Musingku lived for more than twenty years inside his compound at Tonu and, according to Harper's, did not leave it after the 2006 raid. Reporters described a strict regime of fasting, church services and military drills, with meals prepared only by close family. He received visitors in a small office lined with woven coconut leaves, wearing a red British style military coat, a blue sash and a crown of cowrie shells reading KING.

His brother Messach Autahe co-founded the Pei Mure Association with him. Bougainville's attorney general Ezekiel Masatt referred to the king's brothers and their wives as part of his circle. The names of any spouse or children have not been made public.

Musingku blended Pentecostal prosperity teaching, invented Bougainvillean tradition and sovereign citizen ideas about money. He rejected cooperation with the Papua New Guinea government and attacked what he called the "Beast system" and the "Serpentine system" of global finance, naming institutions from the Commonwealth and the United Nations to the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. He drew a line between independence, which he said is granted, and sovereignty, which he said is declared. He told Harper's that kingship was the most universal form of leadership because a kingdom "encompasses everybody" whatever their religion. He denied being a con artist and insisted his currencies were real, and he denied practising sorcery.

U-Vistract became the defining example of the fast money schemes that swept Papua New Guinea around the turn of the millennium, studied at length by anthropologist John Cox, who called Musingku's style "a kind of anticharismatic charisma". The scheme left tens of thousands of people, including Bougainvillean journalist Gorethy Kenneth, without their savings. His armed enclave complicated Bougainville's peace process and its push for independence, and leaders worried it could become a base for insurrection. Abroad, the Bougainville Kina fed a network of sovereign citizen promoters, some of whom were jailed for fraud in the United States. At his death, followers in Tonu still awaited payouts, and observers said it was unclear what would happen to his militia's weapons.

Musingku held no recognised state honours. He styled himself His Majesty King David Peii II (also King Upeii II) of the Royal Kingdom of Papaala and the Twin Kingdoms of Papaala and Me'ekamui, titles not recognised by any government. He in turn handed out knighthoods, ambassadorships and royal adviser posts to foreign visitors and supporters.

Musingku was the subject of Journeyman Pictures documentary reports from Bougainville in the 2000s, regular coverage by Papua New Guinea broadcasters EMTV and TVWAN, the Sydney Morning Herald's 2009 report on his "Jesus money", Sean Williams's long feature "The Island King" in Harper's Magazine (November 2024), and the OCCRP investigation by Aubrey Belford and Torbjorn Wester (December 2025). His followers posted speeches and ceremonies from Tonu on YouTube. John Cox's book Fast Money Schemes: Hope and Deception in Papua New Guinea (Indiana University Press, 2018) examines U-Vistract in detail.

U-Vistract was found by Australian regulators to be an unlicensed investment scheme and was shut down in Australia in 1999 and in Papua New Guinea soon after. Papua New Guinea police held arrest warrants for Musingku, and he remained officially a wanted man for the rest of his life. His armed guards clashed with police in May 2006, and the November 2006 raid on Tonu left several people dead. Associates abroad faced prosecution, among them Iowa adviser David Johnson, sentenced in 2017, and Ohio man Edward Campell, sentenced the following year for BVK related fraud. Florida man Barry Webb was arrested at Port Moresby airport in 2014 carrying BVK notes; his case was dismissed.

Noah Musingku died at Tonu at about 10:00 pm on Monday 12 October 2026, according to the PNG Post-Courier, after an illness of more than three weeks. The nature of the illness was not made public. (Wikipedia's article gives 14 October; ABC News reported only that he died the week before its 20 October report.) A death notice was posted on the Bougainville Independence Movement Facebook page. His body was kept for three days and he was buried on Saturday 17 October 2026 by men in military uniform before a small crowd. Timothy Masiu, MP for South Bougainville, confirmed the death and said he was sad because Musingku was his schoolmate, adding that his passing "brings mixed feelings throughout Bougainville". The notice told followers that all clients would be paid. Anthony Regan of the Australian National University said the money had long gone. He was 61 or 62.