From inside an ordinary provincial FM radio station disc jockey, where the eventual Kapa Community Ministry International was born, the man who founded it has knocked down front page headlines in the country’s major broadsheets.
In between his hours at the turntable and fixing technical difficulties confronting the electronic equipment, Joel Apolinario thought of a project to, up on his mind, uplift the poor in his community in Bislig City in Surigao del Sur”•and he named his project Kabus Padatoon, loosely translated to mean enrich the poor.
Apolinario, reported to be no stranger to estafa case, had said his claimed 10 million members were all happy with the 30-percent return of investment.
National Bureau of Investigation Deputy Director Antonio Pagatpat said Apolinario was the subject of a string of large-scale estafa cases in 2018 which he was able to escape with the help of judges.
READ: ‘Kapa in large-scale estafa’
Apolinario’s educational ledger says he studied at Mountain View College, a private, co-educational, Seventh-day Adventist college in Valencia, Bukidnon, which was established in 1949, the second Adventist college to be established in the Philippines and the first in Mindanao.
One source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Kapa Community Ministry International had its birth roots at the FM radio station’s technician’s booth, with one Emmy Gala among the first to hand a donation to the group.
Before long, in 2016, Apolinario, married to former public school teacher Reyna Apolinario, was able to obtain a business permit from the local government unit of Bislig City for his Kapa-Co Convenience Store and General Merchandise, renamed Kapa Community Ministry International in March 2017, only six months after the permit was released.
A month before that, the local government unit learned those who gave donations”•the exact amounts were not disclosed”•were getting 30-percent monthly interests, prompting then-Mayor Librado Navarro to recommend an inquiry since the group had no convenience store.
From Bislig, Apolinario and his family relocated to General Santos City and left their house at Castillo Village, with an Apolinario family friend staying there.
Sources said many from Bislig City were benefitted by Kapa, against declarations by others – the numbers game had not been precise”•they would no longer allow themselves to become victims of an investment scam.
Before long, the Kapa group reached the table of President Rodrigo Duterte, who immediately ordered the arrest of Kapa officials who had been alleged as involved in an investment scam.
Some informed sources said the Kapa Community Ministry International steadily got into trouble with the law after it won over many members of the rival Kingdom of Jesus Christ, a religious sect whose founder, Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, is a close Duterte friend.
Apolinario earlier this week told the online news site Politiko.com he believed he had gotten under Quiboloy’s skin after poaching a big chunk of the latter’s church membership.
Both organizations operate out of Mindanao, leading members of both groups to express on social media that they were in a turf war, with Kapa seemingly expanding its membership “• to about five million at present “• at KJC’s expense.
The pastors had already traded barbs earlier. Quiboloy, in his own television program on Tuesday night, said Apolinario was a fake pastor, that his ministry was “violating the law,” and that Kapa could not be called a religious group.
The Kapa leader fired back on his group’s radio program the next day, saying Quiboloy was sending out KJC members to either beg in the streets or sell food such as rice cakes.
“Quiboloy has seen that there are some of his (sect) members that he cannot order to ask for money anymore because they have become rich [as members of Kapa],” Apolinario said in Bisaya language to Politiko in a telephone interview.
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