Philippines police say 2,000 officers not enough to arrest megachurch Pastor Apollo Quiboloy
As a standoff between controversial megachurch Pastor Apollo Quiboloy and Philippines police seeking to arrest him for child-sex trafficking entered its sixth day Wednesday, local officials say it will take more than 2,000 police to arrest the fugitive televangelist and Kingdom of Jesus Christ leader at his 74-acre compound in Davao City where he's believed to be hiding in an underground bunker.
Philippine National Police Director for Police Community Relations, Brig. Gen. Roderick Augustus Alba, told the Manila Standard that additional officers from three separate regional police units were sent in to assist the 2,000 officers from Davao who were deployed on Saturday to search for the fugitive pastor.
“It’s because PRO-11 (Davao unit) does not have enough resources in terms of human and material resources, considering this high-profile case involving the leader of a big church group. It really needs support from other units. The area is too big compared to Camp Crame, actually approximately 32 hectares, so the more than 2,000 personnel earlier deployed is, in fact, not enough,” Alba said.
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A report in the Daily Tribune said PNP officers looking to serve Quiboloy with a warrant for his arrest have discovered an elaborate network of rooms, including a number of bedrooms, in a multilevel basement of his mansion on the church’s compound.
Confidential police sources told the publication that the basement is where investigators believe Quiboloy held women against their will and abused them.
Quiboloy, who is facing charges of child abuse and human trafficking, which he and his followers have denied, is also on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for similar charges in the U.S.
An indictment from the Department of Justice in 2021 charged Quiboloy and two of his top administrators with trafficking young women and girls in the U.S. who were coerced into having sex with him under threats of “eternal damnation.” The controversial megachurch pastor allegedly claimed that sex with him was a “privilege” and “God’s will.”
The 2021 charges were an expansion of allegations made in early 2020 against three Los Angeles-based administrators of the church and names nine defendants, including the now 74-year-old Quiboloy, and his two administrators, Teresita Tolibas Dandan, also known as “Tessie,” and “Sis Ting,” now 62, of Davao City. The “international administrator” was one of the top overseers of KOJC and the Glendale-based Children’s Joy Foundation in the United States.
The other top administrator, Felina Salinas, also known as “Sis Eng Eng,” 53, of Kapolei, Hawaii, allegedly collected and secured passports, and other documents from KOJC workers in Hawaii. She also allegedly directed funds solicited from church members to church officials in the Philippines.
Quiboloy, Dandan and Salinas are charged in count one of a superseding indictment, which alleges the sex trafficking conspiracy. Each of them is charged in at least three of five substantive counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion.
Local reports in the Philippines say the standoff between the megachurch pastor and police stem from his lack of assurances from the government that if he surrenders, he will not be extradited to the U.S. to answer for his crimes.
Quiboloy, according to The Straits Times, says a condition for his surrender is a written guarantee from the government that “there will be no American interference and no extraordinary rendition.”
“Unless you give me the guarantee I’m looking for, you won’t see me. Go ahead and manhunt me,” Quiboloy said in a voice clip posted on April 6 on the YouTube channel of his church’s television network, Sonshine Media.
“I’d rather die at the hands of the Filipinos, for my blood to spill here in my country, than to die at the hands of the American authorities who are overseas, in their country.”
Quiboloy who is now 74, is a close friend of former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. He argued that after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. came to power in 2022, Marcos’ government “conspired” with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency to “hand me over to the Americans.”
He insists that if the government agrees not to extradite him. He will surrender.
“I will appear and deal with all those cases,” Quiboloy said. “No matter where you bring them, here in the Philippines.”
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