Apollo Quiboloy
Sonshine Media Network Inc. (SMNI) of self-proclaimed “owner of the universe” and “appointed son of God” Apollo Quiboloy has resurrected on a new channel on YouTube, mere hours after the popular online video-sharing platform shut down its original channel.
In a Facebook post on July 7, the network plugged its new channel, @smninewsofficial, created within a day after their first one was taken down.
As of this writing, the new SMNI channel had over 4,300 subscribers, a small fraction of the 1.7 million subscribers of the shuttered SMNI main page.
Apart from SMNI News, YouTube also took down the channels of megachurch Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) and an SMNI flagship program, “Laban Kasama Ang Bayan.”
“Laban Kasama Ang Bayan,” cohosted by former government official Lorraine Badoy, has reemerged on YouTube, though with just over 600 subscribers.
Google, YouTube’s parent company, said it took down the pages “in compliance with applicable US sanctions laws and enforced related policies under its Terms of Service.”
Both SMNI and KOJC were founded by the pastor-evangelist, who is wanted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for sex trafficking charges.
‘Physical abuse’
In December last year, the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac), acting on an executive order, sanctioned Quiboloy for “[engaging] in serious human rights abuses, including a pattern of systemic and pervasive rape of girls as young as 11 years old, as well as other physical abuse.”
Before this, a federal arrest warrant was issued against him on Nov. 10, 2021, in connection with his indictment on charges of sex trafficking and bulk cash smuggling.
The Treasury implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which allows US officials to sanction individuals accused of corruption or human rights violations.
Under the sanction, all property and interests in the property of designated persons that are in the United States or the possession or control of US persons are blocked and must be reported to Ofac.
The executive order also prohibits any contributions or provision of funds, goods, or services to the benefit of sanctioned people such as Quiboloy.
‘Human trafficking priest’
Because of this, Google said it decided to terminate the three channels.
“After review and consistent with these policies, we terminated the Laban Kasama ang Bayan, KOJC & SMNI YouTube channels,” Google said.
The SMNI termination came on the heels of the takedown of Quiboloy’s personal YouTube channel on June 21 after Canadian content creator Mutahar called out the platform for hosting “an actual human trafficking priest.”
“Yo someone at @TeamYouTube has to help the feds or shut this account down,” Mutahar said in a June 20 post on Twitter which had been retweeted about 2,000 times and earned 14,000 “likes” by the time the platform took action. INQ