Two American women who escaped a doomsday sect in Fiji say they are ready to return to the Pacific island country to testify against the group, seeking to revive a long-stalled human trafficking investigation.
The two women separately fled Fiji for the U.S. after enduring what they allege were years of violence and abuse — including slave-like work conditions — at the hands of Grace Road. They filed separate complaints with local police in late 2024, and early 2025.
Among the most sensitive claims in the complaints is an allegation by one of the victims that she gave free treatments, such massages, to prominent local Fijians while she was in the cult. The clients allegedly included former Prime Minister Frank Bainimiarama.
OCCRP has previously reported how Grace Road, a 300-strong organization largely made up of ethnic Koreans, had tapped political connections to become one of Fiji’s most powerful business conglomerates.
“I want Grace Road to know that I’m not afraid of them anymore,” one of the women told OCCRP. “They have no power over me.”
A lawyer for Grace Road, Nilesh Prasad, said the group “categorically denies… any allegation of human trafficking, slavery, servitude, forced labour, unlawful compulsory labour, debt bondage, assault, or any cruel, degrading or coercive practice.”
Grace Road “further denies any claim that any person was compelled to provide unpaid services to any public official including those that you name,” he added.
OCCRP reported in December that Fiji has until March to show progress on dealing with human trafficking or face an automatic downgrade to the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report’s lowest tier. That could put at risk millions of dollars a year in U.S. development aid.
Both American women told OCCRP they are prepared to travel back to Fiji and assist law enforcement in bringing charges against Grace Road. They declined to be named out of concern for their families’ privacy.
The case was forwarded by police to Fiji’s director of public prosecutions last year, but no charges have yet been filed. The agency did not respond to questions about the status of the case.
The first woman alleged in a criminal complaint filed to local police in November 2024 that she was forcibly separated from her children, subjected to public beatings, and forced to work for long hours for no pay in the cult’s network of businesses.
“I’m ready to go back to Fiji as soon as possible to give evidence,” said the woman, who fled Grace Road in late 2024 and eventually managed to win custody of her two children.
The woman’s complaint to police included the allegation that she gave treatments to former Prime Minister Bainimarama while living and working at a cult-owned beauty salon. She told OCCRP the gift was given on the instruction of Grace Road leaders.
“The ex-prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, I gave him a free facial [treatment] and obviously he didn’t pay jack squat,” she said. “Facial and a little foot massage, if I remember correctly.”
She has also alleged that she was made to give free treatments on at least three occasions during the same year to the country’s then-minister of agriculture, Vatimi Rayalu, and his wife.
Bainimarama, who was convicted in 2024 in a separate case of perverting the course of justice, did not respond to questions sent via his lawyer. Rayalu died in mid-2025. His wife did not respond to a request for comment.
The second American woman originally fled Grace Road in 2017. But she found herself trapped in the group again early last year after she had returned to Fiji to try to get her mother out. She told OCCRP that she now plans to travel back to Fiji with a cousin — whose mother is also in the cult — to attempt to bring both of them home.
“My hope is that their eyes will be opened to the reality of the situation they are trapped in. I want them to be freed not only physically, but also psychologically and emotionally from the control Grace Road has over them,” she said.
A second lawyer representing Grace Road, Dennis Miralis, said in a letter that the group “has not been presented with any independent evidence to support the allegations made by these two complainants.”
In late November 2025, President Donald Trump threatened Nigeria with a U.S. military intervention, posting on Truth Social that he would consider going “guns-a-blazing” into “that now disgraced country” if “the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians.” The post immediately went viral in the United States conservative media space, reinforcing a narrative about “Christian genocide” that has circulated for several years. However, just weeks after that, Nigerian National Security Advisor Nuhu Ribadu sent out a post that sharply contrasted Trump’s inflammatory one, welcoming top U.S. officials, not as saviors or the leaders of the international community, but as partners in a “mature, based-on-trust relationship” with Nigeria. This is a clear example of the two extremes in how to address the complex issue of Nigeria’s growing instability. One extreme is to manufacture a crisis that requires an international response, while the other extreme is to respect Nigeria’s right to self-governance.
Residents of Early, Iowa (population 587) say they often find out their water is unsafe to drink by reading about it on Facebook.
On January 27, 2025, the town advised residents that nitrate levels were too high in the tap water and it was unsafe to drink. They noted to especially avoid using the water to mix formula for babies under six months of age. Exposure to too much nitrate can produce the disease methemoglobinemia, which can be fatal in young children — even in concentrations less than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limit — and is associated with increased cancer risks.
Two months later, the situation was unresolved. In March, water coming out of faucets in Early contained 11.3 milligrams per liter of nitrate, 1.3 mg/L above the EPA limit for safe drinking water. The town was “working with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to resolve the situation,” the notice said.
In April, the city’s water still violated the maximum nitrate levels. One resident, who said he has lived in Early since 2017, commented on one of the town’s Facebook posts that this happens every summer.
The issue “should have been addressed long before now,” he wrote.
May and June levels were also too high. According to water department reports reviewed by Sentient, drought conditions caused low water levels in the city’s wells, resulting in increased nitrate concentrations.
Finally, in July, a reprieve. Over 9 inches of rain, which refilled the wells. “All in all a huge improvement,” the water department wrote in the comment section of their July water report. On August 21, the city posted a celebratory message:
“As of August 21st, 2025, Early’s water supply is now clear for drinking and cooking. You may now fully (with some limitations*) utilize your water.” The flyer continued, “You are still required to limit all non-essential uses of water in order to conserve resources.”
The situation in Early is not unique. Four other municipalities in Iowa — Dawson (population 116), Bristow (population 145), Lewis (population 357) and Danbury (population 320) — faced nitrate violations last year.
Excess nitrates are pesky to filter out from drinking water, requiring a pricy reverse osmosis treatment system. Larger municipalities like Des Moines with large water systems can run their multi-million-dollar nitrate removal facilities if levels get too high. Des Moines can also rely on water from backup water sources if nitrate levels are too high in the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers from which the city ordinarily draws its water.
But small towns like Early face tough questions, even with similar technology, like what to provide residents, if anything, when the water is undrinkable, and how to fund fixes for the long term. And drought exacerbates the problem, because nitrate removal systems do not function properly with low water levels.
David Cwiertny, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa, worries that “we’re kind of teetering dangerously close to having this happen in more and more communities around Iowa.”
“I just don’t think we’re ready for the fallout that comes when you have to tell large segments of your population or entire small communities that you can’t drink your water,” he says.
A Persistent Problem
When Jon Livermore moved to Early five years ago, he did not know the town was having water issues.
He found out pretty quickly.
As he was washing his vehicle, he recalls, a city council member drove by and told him to stop washing, explaining that the city was under a water advisory, posted in City Hall.
When the water levels in wells are too low, there may not be enough water to meet typical household demand. This could also mean there is also not enough water to run reverse osmosis filters, which require a minimum flow of water and pressures to function correctly, Cwiertny explains.
Early Mayor Bill Cougill confirmed to Sentient that one of the city’s wells had very low water levels last year, forcing the city to “divert around” its reverse osmosis filter. This meant the city’s tap water was coming “basically straight out of the ground,” without filtering out the high nitrate levels.
The Early water department’s May water report confirms that the levels were too low for the town to run their reverse osmosis filter. The report, reviewed by Sentient, says the town was “by-passing” its reverse osmosis filtration system because of drought conditions.
The culprit at the heart of nitrate pollution is nitrogen-containing fertilizer.
Livermore knows all too well about nitrates. He is a certified manure applicator, meaning he spends his days spreading nitrogen-filled manure on fields of crops.
The culprit at the heart of nitrate pollution is nitrogen-containing fertilizer, either synthetic or manure-based, applied to corn fields across the state. Iowa is the state with the most factory farms, where animals produce 110 billion pounds of manure that is spread across cropland. Overapplication can saturate fields, causing the pollution to leach into ground and surface water. Some critics of the state’s manure management policies argue that lack of oversight is one reason why the problem continues to worsen.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the median depth for a public-supply water well is 202 feet. One Early well, drilled in 1973, is 33 feet deep. The other, drilled in 2012, is 42 feet deep. Satellite data shows that the wells are surrounded by cropland; indeed, the entire town is surrounded by cropland. As nitrate and other pollutants leach from the surface of fields into the soil, it does not take long for them to reach the wells.
Not Chump Change
For municipalities like Early, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources administers the Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund, which gave out loans totaling $41.9 million in 2025. Early received a $1.45 million loan from this program to dig a new, deeper well. According to Cougill, the town is working toward the planning and designing phase of that project, which the town received a $400,000 loan for.
But these loans will eventually need to be repaid. In towns with only a few hundred people, even with the cost spread across the population, that’s no chump change.
According to the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the average Iowan pays around $39.20 per 2,000 gallons of water. In Early, that rate is almost doubled when adding in the water improvement fee, which each Early household pays at a monthly rate of $33.25. Cougill tells Sentient that this fee goes toward paying off debt for the new treatment plant, as well as future improvements like a new well. Water costs $31.30 for the first 2,000 gallons (this is also the minimum charge for ratepayers — even if there is a conservation advisory).
These numbers do not include the cost of buying bottled water for consumption during the numerous “Do Not Consume” advisories. In Early, the city relies on donations from local businesses like grocery store Hy-Vee, as well as the state and county government for bottled water, which they typically distribute from 10 a.m.–2 p.m. — a time, Livermore notes, which can be difficult for working families. The posts advise that one household representative can pick up water, which is distributed based on household size.
On April 14, 2025, in the midst of the “Do Not Consume” advisories, a notice was posted on the town’s community Facebook page that the town could no longer provide bottled water to their community members.
“We are still currently in a Water Conservation Warning and a Do Not Consume Advisory,” a digital art photo with a sticky note read.
In the body of the post, the author wrote:
“FIRM REMINDER TO ALL THIS IS NOT A POST FOR YOU TO VENT ABOUT EARLY AND THE WATER,” advising residents to voice their concerns at the city council meeting, or volunteer on the council or the fire department, or at the library. “Do your part to be a neighbor and we will get through all of this TOGETHER!”
The Depth of the Problem
Early could be a canary in the coal mine for Iowa, Cwiertny says. The water situation in the town is one of “the first of what will probably be many more in the coming years if we don’t find a better way to protect our source water quality, because it’s going to be harder and harder for systems to make it work in a changing climate,” he says.
Protecting the water, he says, must begin at the source of the problem, which in this case, is on fields.
As of right now, Early’s Mayor Cougill says, the town is running their old water filtration system. For now, that’s enough.
“It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just something that happened with ‘Mother Nature,’ and a well going dry,” he says. “We’re having to deal with it, and this is how it has to be dealt with.”
Cougill tells Sentient he does “not even want to speculate” about when the new well will be drilled. It’s a big project, he says.
Livermore does not want to wait. Leaving Early, he says, is the “cheapest” thing to do. “I’m not going to sit here and bang my head against the fucking wall,” he says.
Even when the water is cleared by the city to drink, Livermore explains, it is only a matter of time before the next notice.
“It’s just a whole lot easier just to pack the bags and leave,” he says.
But there is no guarantee the next town will have it all figured out.
Norwegian prosecutors have charged two individuals and a subsidiary of Oslo-listed PetroNor E&P with paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to people close or related to Congo’s president to secure oil licenses, according to an indictment shared with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on Wednesday.
The indictment, issued by Norway’s economic crime authority Økokrim, describes the case as “grand corruption,” alleging that senior political figures were targeted with bribes of exceptionally high value in connection with oil operations in the Republic of Congo from 2016 onward.
The two Norwegians charged, Knut Søvold and Gerhard Ludvigsen, were senior executives of Hemla Africa Holding, the PetroNor subsidiary implicated in the case, and held leading operational roles in the company’s African oil ventures at the time of the alleged scheme.
Økokrim alleges that the bribes were paid alongside applications for and the awarding of stakes in the PNGF Sud offshore oil licenses. The benefits were allegedly funneled to companies controlled by close family members of Congo’s president. Norway does not have jurisdiction over the alleged recipients and has not assessed their criminal liability.
According to the indictment, the alleged bribes included granting presidential relatives a roughly 25 percent ownership stake in a company holding a 20 percent interest in the PNGF Sud license, the provision of interest-free loans totaling at least five million euros and $15 million that were later forgiven or treated as advance dividends, monthly payments totaling more than $1.1 million, and dividend transfers that Økokrim says generated at least $24.7 million in benefits by 2024.
Prosecutors also allege that a $100,000 payment in 2019 was intended to support an election campaign by a close family member of the Congolese president and was disguised through false invoices, forming part of additional charges of accounting violations against the two Norwegian defendants.
Økokrim said Monday that its investigation uncovered a broader cross-border scheme involving multiple exporters and intermediaries, supported by extensive international cooperation, including with authorities in France, Monaco and the United States. The case originated from a suspicious bank transaction to Monaco flagged by financial intelligence authorities there.
The company charged in the case, Hemla Africa Holding AS, is a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of PetroNor E&P ASA and the majority shareholder of Hemla E&P Congo, which holds the PNGF Sud license stake.
In a statement, PetroNor said it “categorically contests” the indictment of Hemla and welcomed the opportunity to have the case examined in court. The company noted that Økokrim had dropped suspected market manipulation allegations and said it would continue operating in the normal course of business while court proceedings are pending.
Økokrim said the indictment has led to criminal investigations in three EU member states and prompted stronger monitoring and risk profiling of future exports linked to sanctions enforcement.
Dutch prosecutors sentenced on Tuesday 42-year-old Eritrean national to 20 years in prison for leading a criminal organization, human trafficking, and extortion of migrants in Libya.
Prosecutors determined that under the direction of Amanuel W., hundreds of migrants were “rounded up and detained in warehouses in Libya in appalling conditions” between 2014 to 2018. Victims were also subjected to physical abuse, extortion, and starvation. The court also ruled that the convicted human smuggler must pay a total of more than 30,000 euro in compensation to the victims.
OCCRP reported last November that the Dutch court concluded the case against him in what was labeled the “Netherlands’ largest-ever human trafficking case.” The verdict comes years after the Eritrean national was arrested in Ethiopia in 2020 and sentenced to 18 years in prison in Addis Ababa, before being extradited to the Netherlands in late 2022.
Exiled Venezuelan journalist Laura Weffer travels to Florida to look for Carmelo Urdaneta, a former oil ministry official involved in the $1.2 billion “Money Flight” scandal.
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