Discord within Kapa amid legal woes

DENIAL. Pastor Joel Apolinario denies having any connection with Kapa Credit Cooperative, which is said to have been put up by one of the group’s leaders, Jun Ferolino, in General Santos City. (SunStar file)
DENIAL. Pastor Joel Apolinario denies having any connection with Kapa Credit Cooperative, which is said to have been put up by one of the group’s leaders, Jun Ferolino, in General Santos City. (SunStar file)

CRACKS are showing within the Kapa organization, with its founder warning of some leaders breaking away to form their own groups without his consent.

In an interview on the organization’s program over Jack Radio Koronadal on Aug. 16, 2019, Kapa-Community Ministry International Inc. founder Pastor Joel Apolinario warned Kapa members not to join the Kapa Credit Cooperative said to have been put up in General Santos City by one of his leaders, Kapa member Jun Ferolino.

“Don’t be fooled. I have no connection with that,” Apolinario told the program’s anchor, Kapa Global/OIC/branch manager Bong Cagape, in Tagalog.

Kapa’s investment-taking activities have been suspended for being illegal and the organization is still fighting a legal battle for its survival.

Apolinario described Ferolino as his designated “overall leader in Sarangani Province.”

“And he (Ferolino) even asked me for the chance to branch out to Cebu, which I granted. But now that he has set up his own group and is using the name of Kapa, that violates intellectual property. And that’s a criminal case,” Apolinario said.

The Kapa founder and president said he heard that Ferolino was claiming to be his “assistant founder” and was even the one signing forms now.

Sun.Star Cebu tried to call Ferolino and contact him on Facebook, to no avail.

Apolinario also warned Kapa members against “our friends in radio in Kidapawan (City, Cotabato),” who were also using the name of Kapa, “but for their personal interest.”

The pastor thanked Kapa members who had refrained from filing cases against him, saying the few members who had, were delaying the reopening of Kapa.

Apolinario said the few members who had filed complaints with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) against Kapa included a few in Sarangani, one from Tandag, one from Surigao and one from Butuan City.

Following NBI raids on Kapa’s offices nationwide, including in Cebu, on June 10, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), on June 18, lodged a criminal complaint against Kapa before the Department of Justice for allegedly operating an illegal multi-billion-peso investment scam.

The SEC said Kapa and its officials perpetrated a scam in violation of Republic Act 8799, or the Securities Regulation Code.

“The Commission found Kapa to have enticed the public to donate at least P10,000 in exchange for a 30 percent monthly ‘blessing’ or ‘love gift’ for life, without having to do anything other than invest and wait for the payout,” it said in a statement.

Earlier, on April 3, the SEC had revoked Kapa’s certificate of incorporation for committing “serious misrepresentation on what it can do.”

The SEC accused it of employing a Ponzi scheme, an act that “qualifies as a fraudulent transaction prohibited under Section 26.3 of the Securities Regulation Code.”

In last Friday’s interview, Apolinario said members who wanted to get their money back were ill advised in filing cases, as that would only prolong their agony.

He said it normally took the courts five to 10 years to decide cases, “and you’d only get your money back if you won,” he said.

He cited the case of Kapa members in Bislig City, Surigao del Sur.

He said those who had not filed cases were able to “solve their problem” in one month, but for those who had filed cases, they were able to do so only after a year and only because he had taken pity on them.

Apolinario insisted that he had not been operating a scam.

“There are just some things that they (government) want corrected, which we can correct,” he said.

He asked members to continue praying that the courts would rule in Kapa’s and his favor.

Apolinario blamed Kapa’s present legal woes on 32 pastors from the Seventh-day Adventist Church who, he said, instigated the investigation on Kapa by going not only to the SEC but also to rival evangelist Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, a known friend of President Duterte, to complain about Kapa’s activities.

Duterte subsequently ordered Kapa’s shutdown over its investment scheme offering impossibly high returns.

On the 32 pastors’ motivation, Apolinario claimed to be clueless.

“I don’t know what they ate,” he complained on the program. “Their relatives are even Kapa members, whom we were able to help.”

Apolinario called the 32 pastors “peste (pests),” who had brought on the “buwisit (nuisance and misery)” in the life of Kapa’s “five to six million members.”

He said the Seventh-day Adventists had “nice doctrines and teachings,” but with the attitude of these particular pastors, he urged that group’s members to reject them.

“Sa ugali ng mga pastors na to, dapat di na tanggapin ng members niyan,” he said.

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