How a Filipino preacher wanted by the FBI held police off for weeks

It was a stunning denouement for the self-proclaimed “appointed son of God,” a Filipino evangelist preacher who had millions of followers and influence at the highest levels of government but was wanted by Philippine authorities and the FBI on charges of human trafficking and sexual abuse.

Apollo Quiboloy, 74, was arrested Sunday at his sprawling religious compound in the southern Philippine city of Davao, ending a two-week standoff that had gripped the deeply religious Southeast Asian country.

The arrest of Quiboloy, a trusted spiritual adviser of former President Rodrigo Duterte, threatens to deepen a split between the country’s two most powerful families, who joined forces in the 2022 election only for that alliance to fall apart after they won.

Duterte’s successor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., said Monday that there would be “no special treatment” for Quiboloy, who appeared before the media with his face concealed by a cap, sunglasses, mask and scarf. Marcos described the effort to apprehend Quiboloy as “police work at its best.”

Marcos said authorities had rejected Quiboloy’s request that he not be extradited to the United States, where he is accused of bringing church members on fraudulently obtained visas and forcing them to solicit charitable donations that were used to fund the lavish lifestyles of Quiboloy and other leaders of his Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

The Philippine Department of Justice said Monday that Quiboloy would first have to face trial and serve any resulting sentence in the Philippines before being extradited anywhere.

Quiboloy has denied all wrongdoing. His lawyer, Israelito Torreon, said the preacher had surrendered because he did not want the situation to further escalate and that a court would affirm his innocence.

U.S. federal prosecutors indicted Quiboloy and others in Nov. 2021 for alleged child trafficking, sex trafficking by force, fraud, coercion, conspiracy and bulk cash smuggling, among other crimes. In Dec. 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Quiboloy for engaging in “serious human rights abuse, including a pattern of systemic and pervasive rape of girls as young as 11 years old.”

But it is only recently that Quiboloy was pursued in his home country, where he once seemed untouchable. That changed in March of this year, when a Philippine court ordered the arrest of Quiboloy and several others on suspicion of child and sexual abuse and human trafficking. The court order prompted Quiboloy to go into hiding, saying that the “devil” was behind his legal troubles.

It was this warrant that Philippine police were acting on at the compound.

Some 2,000 Philippine police officers had surrounded the property, the center of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, a breakaway Christian sect that Quiboloy founded in 1985. They were backed up by hundreds of soldiers as riots erupted among congregants who rallied to defend their leader.

According to local media, more than 60 police officers were injured in violent clashes with church members who protested their leader’s innocence. One member died of a heart attack during the initial raid.

Police said they would not leave the compound without Quiboloy, who said he would “not be caught alive.”

Last week, Philippine police said radar had detected a human heartbeat deep beneath the compound, leading them to believe Quiboloy was hiding in an underground bunker.

After failing to find an entrance to the bunker, police dug a tunnel in the basement of a building on the compound that some lawmakers criticized as an excessive use of force.

Police spokesperson Col. Jean Fajardo said Quiboloy and his co-accused surrendered peacefully on Sunday after they were given a 24-hour ultimatum before police raided a building they had previously been barred from entering. Quiboloy had been hiding in the compound’s “bible school,” police said Monday.

After his surrender, officials said, Quiboloy was flown by military transport to Manila, the capital, and placed in police detention.

The pastor’s arrest was welcomed by members of the Philippine Senate, which also wanted Quiboloy for refusing to appear at committee hearings into the criminal allegations against him.

“The days are numbered for those who pretend to be kings,” Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros said in a statement after Quiboloy’s arrest, “those who flout the law, who abuse womankind, children and our fellow Filipinos.”

Others were less enthusiastic. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos said that Duterte had filed a criminal complaint against him and other officials for damaging Quiboloy’s property.

It’s a stunning reversal of fortune for Quiboloy, who has 7 million followers around the world, according to his church. The preacher had amassed a fortune big enough to fly by private jet around the world, and curried favor by endorsing political candidates in a country where the opinions of religious leaders hold a lot of weight.

But Quiboloy might have known his downfall was coming.

In 2018, on his way to Davao on his private plane, Quiboloy was held by U.S. authorities in Hawaii when officials found rifle parts on board and $350,000 in cash stuffed inside socks. Quiboloy was released after a woman he was traveling with claimed that the money was hers.

By 2022, his face was on an FBI wanted poster, which cited the alleged labor trafficking scheme as well as the alleged abuse of women and girls recruited to work as personal assistants, or “pastorals,” who were required to have sex with him.

In one of his last public sightings in February 2023, Quiboloy accused Marcos of colluding with the U.S. government to “eliminate” him, without providing evidence.

After winning the presidency in 2022, Marcos set about dismantling Duterte’s power alliances, including the one with Quiboloy. The pursuit of Quiboloy is one of several issues that have unraveled the alliance between Marcos and his vice president, Sara Duterte, who is the former president’s daughter.

Last week, Sara Duterte apologized to the congregants of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ for urging them to vote for Marcos, who was her running mate in the 2022 election.

“I was on the mistaken belief that we were together on the platform of unity and continuity. I made a mistake and I ask for your forgiveness,” she said.

Marcos said he did not understand Duterte’s apology but that it was “her prerogative” to make it, local media reported.