Nigerian anti-human trafficking authorities say they’ve arrested Christiana Uadiale, a subject of ICIJ’s 2023 Trafficking Inc. investigation, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, on Tuesday, New Year’s Eve, according to Nigerian news media reports.

Uadiale, also known as “Christy Gold,” was arrested after a federal high court in Nigeria convicted her in absentia March 21 on a six-count charge of trafficking in persons.

Gold emerged as a key figure in a June 2023 investigation by ICIJ and Reuters, which identified the United Arab Emirates as a major destination for sex trafficking. Court records and interviews with officials, survivors and activists revealed how criminal networks lured African women into sexual slavery, coercing them by imposing crushing debts and exploiting their spiritual beliefs.

  • Recommended reading

The investigation was part of ICIJ’s Trafficking Inc. project, which explored the networks of companies, people and business practices that profit from cross-border labor trafficking and sex trafficking abuse. Christy Gold, who showcased a glamorous lifestyle on social media while on the run from sex trafficking charges in Nigeria, was a central figure in one of those networks.

In a statement Thursday from Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, spokesperson Vincent Adekoya called Gold “a senior member of an organized human trafficking syndicate,” The Nation reported. Adekoya attributed her arrest to coordination across multiple Nigerian agencies and the United Arab Emirates Police.

The spokesman also said that several of Uadiale’s alleged associates are still at large.

“This is a clear message to other members of this international criminal gang who are still on the run: They can only hide for a while; they can never hide forever,” Binta Adamu Bello, the anti-trafficking agency’s Director General, said in a statement Friday, the Nation reported. “We have already activated all necessary security and intelligence apparatus, and our partners around the World are on the lookout for these elements. Very soon, the net will catch them.”

After the publication of ICIJ’s 2023 investigation, Gold appeared on TikTok, flashing gold jewelry and posting comments and videos that indicated she was in the UAE.

@2024gold4♬ original sound – AUTHENTIC

In videos posted from June, she appeared to be in property tours with a representative of DAMAC properties, a Dubai real estate developer. Several posts in April show her at the Rukn Al Nahda Saloon in the nearby city of Sharjah.

She even appeared to have traveled; in September, she posted a TikTok advertising her wares in Manchester. And in February, just over a month before Nigerian courts convicted her in absentia, she posted videos of herself in Nigeria’s capital Abuja and in Benin City, where her case was prosecuted.

@2024gold4♬ original sound – SARDAM

According to interviews and court statements, Gold and her associates targeted Nigerian women desperate for work, promising them jobs in Dubai and helping them obtain passports and tourist visas to travel.

One woman said once she arrived, she was told there was no job. Instead, she’d have to participate in sex work at clubs, restaurants and hotels to pay her $12,000 debt to Gold for bringing her there.

Three women who say they were trafficked and exploited by Gold alleged that she took their passports, and that Gold threatened to kill them and dump their bodies in the desert if they didn’t do as they were told. At one point, the women said, they lived in a two-bedroom apartment, with Gold in one bedroom and as many as 18 women crammed into the other.

Gold’s brother tortured those who didn’t make enough money. He starved them, flogged them and shoved hot chili paste into their vaginas, according to three anti-trafficking officials and five women who provided detailed accounts in interviews and court statements.

In a statement to the court in Nigeria after she was initially charged, Gold denied that she and her brother were sex traffickers. She told the court that she had helped men and women move to the UAE by subletting space in an apartment she owned in Dubai, but denied knowing what they did for work.

Nigerian authorities charged Gold with six counts of sex trafficking, but she failed to show up for a scheduled court appearance on Nov. 3, 2021, after posting bail.

Her lawyer told the judge that she had been taken to a hospital, and the judge ordered she be taken back into custody, but authorities were not able to locate her.

“I am happy it was a sad end for human traffickers in the country in 2024 and we promise them a hell in 2025,” The Nation reported the anti-trafficking agency’s Binta Adamu Bello said. “We are more determined and will be more decisive this year to fish them out and ensure the protection of Nigerians from trafficking, exploitation, and violence against persons.”