Florida Con Man Busted in New Guinea Ferrying “Funny Money” to Self-Styled Bougainville “King”

South Pacific “funny money” is in the news again.  A couple weeks ago in this blog, we reported on a French police raid on an armed monarchist encampent in Tahiti to arrest a self-styled Polynesian king and his followers for circulating the currency of their proclaimed “Pakumotu Republic.”  And now, at the other, western end of Oceania, a United States citizen was arrested in Papua New Guinea (P.N.G.) for possession of the “illegal” currency of the Bougainville separatist movement

On February 15th, Barry Keith Webb arrived in Port Moresby, the P.N.G. capital, on an Air Niugini flight from Manila, in the Philippines.  He was en route to Buka, the current interim capital of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.  But he was arrested after customs officer found his briefcase contained a million and a half crisp, new Bougainville kina.  Webb produced a letter to corroborate his claim that he was an officer of the International Organisation of Economic Development (I.O.E.D.) formally invited to Tonu, a town on Bougainville Island.  The letter, signed by “King David Peii II,” was to award him the position of Minister of International Monetary Relations, a post with the so-called Central Bank of Bougainville.  But the problem is that Bougainville is not an independent state.

Barry Webb, King David Peii’s royal money-launderer

Bougainville is one of the largest islands in P.N.G., which won independence from Australia in 1975.  Geographically and culturally, it is part of the Solomon Islands, which was a separate administration in the days of British colonial rule.  At independence in 1975, Bougainvilleans tried to establish a separate Republic of North Solomons, which aimed eventually to unite with the not-yet-independent British Solomon Islands Protectorate to its east.  But the British Solomon Islanders were not interested, and after six months Bougainville agreed to be part of P.N.G. on condition of enhanced autonomy.  Separatism reemerged in the 1980s, however, and in 1990 the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG) declared independence, igniting a civil war that lasted until 1997, killing over 20,000 people.  The last holdouts from the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (B.R.A.) did not surrender and formed a tiny encampment around the Panguna copper mine on Bougainville where the rebellion had begun.  This last separatist redoubt did not end until Francis Ona, a B.R.A. founder, who had crowned himself “King of Me’ekamui,” died in 2005.  Bougainvillean sovereigntists claim that Me’ekamui and Paapala are the two kingdoms that traditionally rule the island; others claim they are smaller traditional polities for the area around Tonu.

Bougainvilleans celebrate independence day

The apparent author of Webb’s job-offer letter, King David Peii II, is in fact, Noah Musingku, who was a self-styled monarch of Paapala alongside his ally Ona during the 1990-97 war.  In the late 1990s, Musingku launched an elaborate investment scheme called U-Vistract, established first as part of a Christian mission in Australia.  But Australian authorities arrested Musingku for running what they called a Ponzi scheme.  Musingku now runs an operation in Tonu which is half investment scam and half Pentecostal mission, staffed by mercenaries from Fiji.

King David Peii II

P.N.G.’s own official central bank is not amused; their currency is also called the kina.   The bank’s governor, Loi Bakani, said, “The money is illegal.  If you look at the 100 Bougainville kina note, it has the kina name on it but different features and pictures, therefore it is illegal.  Also the legal tender is in Papua New Guinea kina and the change of the design also has its own penalties.”

Their currency looks pretty slick and professional.
But the same cannot be said of all of Bougainville’s trappings of state.

Webb—whose Google+ page identifies him as a Duquesne University graduate living in Clearwater, Florida—has been in touch with the U.S. consulate in P.N.G.  Webb’s rap sheet in Florida includes criminal charges for running real-estate and personal-loan schemes.  It is not clear whether there is much Washington can do for him.

Is this what you want to see on the résumé
for a candidate for Minister of International Monetary Relations?

Separatist sentiment is high in Bougainville, but it is not clear how much faith the general population there has in King David Peii II.  A binding referendum on independence has been promised by the P.N.G. government for some time before 2021.  It will probably pass.  But the fledgling nation will do well to clean up its act a bit when it comes to financial dealings if they want to have a viable state.

Not ready for prime time: King David inspecting his troops

[You can read more about Bougainville and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Sandy Island May Not Exist, but Now It Has a King

Last month, media attention was drawn to Sandy Island (a.k.a. Île du Sable), in the Coral Sea between Australia and New Caledonia when a University of Sydney plate-tectonics surveying ship headed to the island to investigate discrepancies in their charts and found out there was nothing there but open sea.  They had seen the island on Google Maps and Google Earth—shown as being in the territorial waters of New Caledonia and, thus, of the French Republic—but it has also appeared in numerous atlases and other sources.  Nor is this a mere location error.  Sandy Island doesn’t exist and has never existed.  Its posited existence and position were traced first to a 1908 map and then to one by the legendary British explorer Capt. James Cook from 1774.  The island’s non-existence was not very loudly suspected, if at all, but was unconfirmed for centuries.

Now, a German man calling himself King Marduk I has laid claim, on behalf of the State Kingdom of Marduk, to Sandy Island, which he claims does indeed exist and which he names after himself, i.e. King Marduk Island.  The self-styled king, who is named for a Babylonian god (or possibly for the eponymous alleged tenth planet of our solar system “discovered” by the crackpot archaeo-astronomer Zechariah Sitchin), several years ago tried to claim the Principality of Sealand, the disused World War II derrick off the coast of Essex, England, which is one of the modern world’s best known and most successful “micronations.”

His Majesty, King Marduk I

Marduk declared this week on his website (in language that suggests he relies as heavily on Google Translate to render his German into  Englissh as he does on Google Maps to tell him which islands exist or don’t exist): “H. M. KING MARDUK I DECLARE THAT THE SINCE DECADES OF STATE FREE ISLAND TERRITORY UNDER THE NAME CALLED ‘SANDY ICELAND’ [sic] THE PACIFIC LOCATED—ALWAYS NO STATE EITHER COUNTRY COURSE LISTENING BETWEEN AUSTRALIA AND EAST OF WHICH LOCATED COLONIAL COUNTRY NEW CALEDONIA—THE SANDY ISLAND LOCATED—THOSE LEGAL UNVERWERFLICH NO PHANTOM’S ISLAND—BUT ACTUALLY EXIST IN POSITION [WGS84] 19°13'6.43"S, 159°55'23:42"E – 19.218451°, 159.923172 ° [UTM] 57K 597040 7874744 INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED LOCATED—FROM A STATE SURVIVE FREE TERRITORY IS—WHERE THIS ISLAND SINCE 1922 ON CARD DOCUMENTED—RECENTLY THE UNITED NATIONS IN 2002 TO YOUR DECREE CONFIRMED THIS ISLAND.”

An image from the Kingdom of Marduk website

Other territories Marduk claims for his kingdom (called, in some reference, New Germania) include: much of the eastern Alps, including the Austria’s Vorarlberg state, the Italian region of South Tyrol, Liechtenstein, and parts of Switzerland and Bavaria around, and including, Lake Constance (Bodensee); various localities in the Swiss cantons of Schaffhausen and the cities of Basel and Bern; the entire former Kingdom of Württemberg; the Dogger Bank, the German island of Heligoland, and the artificial island Langlütjen, all in the North Sea; Hamburg and, by extension, the Baltic Sea; the island of Rockall, between Scotland and Iceland (and itself once the location of a publicity-stunt micronation called Waveland); Vatican City; the micronation of Seborga, on the border between Italy and France; parts of Ticino, in southern Switzerland; Jerusalem; and—why aim low, right?—all of outer space.

The former micronation of Waveland, in the North Atlantic
—claimed also by the Kingdom of Marduk.

Little is known about King Marduk himself, but a Swiss journalist who reported recently on Marduk’s royal territorial claims on the town of Büsingen, Schaffhausen, quoted the kingdom’s secretary of state, one Thomas Vogel, as saying—with a kind of wild inconsistency—that his monarch “shuns publicity and does not want to be recognized.  He lives in Tübingen in a stately residence, not a castle.  He has a huge royal fleet with twelve cars for state visits such as Jaguars and Mercedes.  Apart from a Rolex, he has not a lot of wealth.  The king is wise as a professor and lives rather modestly.”  The reporter, Hermann-Luc Hardmeier, who interviewed the bling-laden “Vogel” in Büsingen after his arrival in a limousine, seemed sure that “Vogel” was merely “Marduk” in disguise, but photographs of the monarch do not much resemble the man Hardmeier interviewed.

The Kingdom of Marduk’s secretary of state, Thomas Vogel,
arriving for an important press conference with a reporter from the Schaffhauser Nachrichten

Going back to Sandy Island—the French government has not yet responded to Marduk’s claims on its territory, but then again Paris has also reacted not at all to the fact that an island which it thought it owned now does not exist and what the implications are for its maritime boundaries.  Nor have their been responses from the separatist movement in New Caledonia or from an unrecognized nation which claims waters (which the world grants to Australia) just to the west of “Sandy Island”: the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands.  Theoretically, this could get ugly.

Postage stamps produced by the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands.
It’s nice to finally see the “bear” subculture honored with a stamp.

Here at “Springtime of Nations,” we will keep you posted on any further developments regarding non-existent islands.

Related articles from this blog: “WikiLeaks Mulls Moving Its Servers to Sealand to Dodge National Laws,” “His Royal Highness Roy Bates, Prince of Sealand (1921-2012), Father of Micronation and Seasteading Movements.”

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  (That is shorter than the previous working title.)  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]