Dutch officials demand record $250m from fugitive drug lord hiding in Africa

Sunday World

3 days ago

The fugitive drug trafficker Jos Leijdekkers, also known as Bolle Jos or 'Chubby Jos', is believed to be in Sierra Leone
Leijdekkers is also known as Bolle Jos or 'Chubby Jos"
Dutch prosecutors are to confiscate a record $250 million from one of Europe's most-wanted criminals.
The fugitive drug trafficker Jos Leijdekkers, also known as Bolle Jos or 'Chubby Jos', is believed to be hiding over 4,000 miles away in Sierra Leone.
Leijdekkers is believed to have made €114m from 14 cocaine shipments in less than a year.
As well as real estate including a hotel in Turkey and apartments in Dubai, public prosecutors say the 33-year-old also spent €47m on 975 kilograms of gold in less than six months.
Intercepted communications point to other luxury goods hoovered up by the drugs kingpin, including two Bentley cars, designer bags, jewellery and watches.
There are all added to the total of illicit assets, bringing the total to $253 million, which is 'only a first step towards tracing Leijdekkers' assets,' prosecutors have said
Leijdekkers was sentenced in absentia to 24 years in prison for ordering a murder and organising cocaine shipments by a Rotterdam court last June.
The fugitive drug trafficker, Jos Leijdekkers, pictured in Sierra Leone
News in 90 June 4th
Considered to be 'one of the key players in international cocaine trafficking," according to Europol, he is on their most-wanted list, with the European police body offering over $225,000 for information leading to his arrest.
Dutch authorities said they were "absolutely certain" he was hiding out in Sierra Leone last January, when the BBC reported that Dutch prosecutor Wim de Bruin said the fugitive's return to the Netherlands was of "the highest priority."
Suspicions he was in Sierra Leone arose after the country's first lady Fatima Bio posted pictures and a video on social media that showed a man strongly resembling Leijdekkers at a religious service.
Images apparently showing Leijdekkers in the company of officials as high as President Julius Maada Bio and his daughter prompted exiled Sierra Leone opposition figure Mohamed Mansaray to accused Bio and his government of "offering refuge" to the drug lord.
According to Mansaray, Leijdekkers has coupled up with the president's daughter Agnes Bio, who is seen accompanying the drug lord in the images.
Leijdekkers is also known as Bolle Jos or 'Chubby Jos"
Europol also believe that Leijdekkers was involved in the disappearance and death of Naima Jillal, a woman who went missing in 2019 after she got into a car in Amsterdam
Intercepted messages allegedly showed that Leijdekkers "played an important role in Jillal's disappearance," the agency said.
"For a long time, there was no trace of Naima Jillal, until photos of a woman believed to be her were found on a phone seized in the Marengo investigation," Europol said. "The photos show that she was most likely tortured and is probably no longer alive."
In April, we reported how journalists were being actively bribed and threatened to stop reporting on Leijdekkers.
Several reporters, who are in hiding, told John van den Heuvel, a journalist for Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, that the government of Sierra Leone had offered them sums of up to €5,000 to cease the publication of details about their connection to the most wanted person in the Netherlands.
Reporters who are not accepting the money are being threatened.
The journalists have said that €5k is 'unprecedentedly high by African standards' which to them indicates how important it is to those in power that the story is kept quiet.
Fearing for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, some reporters have fled the country.
One journalist who has applied for political asylum in the United States told De Telegraaf: 'There is no freedom of the press in our country.
'Our government, including the president, facilitates the criminal group to which Leijdekkers belongs.
'Journalists no longer dare to write about the matter. It is extremely dangerous.'
Bolle Jos, which means 'Tubby Jos' in Dutch, is hiding in the African country while on the run and according to investigative journalists at Follow The Money, he was filmed handing Alusine Kanneh, the country's head of immigration, a birthday present in March.
The publication says that according to 'well-placed sources' the 33-year-old is in a relationship with Agnes Bio, who is the daughter of president Julius Maada Bio. De Telegraaf further reported she is pregnant with his child.
They also report that the Sierra Leone government has 'barely responded' to several diplomatic and legal assistance requests made by the Netherlands as they try to extradite the man Europol once described as 'one of the key players in international cocaine smuggling'.
Following the media storm around Jos Leijdekkers' presence in Sierra Leone, the government released a press statement that claimed the president had 'no knowledge of the identity and the issues detailed in the reports about the individual in question.'
They further claimed to launch a 'transparent and through investigation' to establish the facts.
A month later the Inspector General of Police (IGP), William Fayia Sellu, claimed that following an investigation, they found the man accused of being Leijdekkers, is actually a man named Omarr Sheriff. It is unclear if Jos is living under an assumed name or if they're claiming it's a case of mistaken identity.
Bolle Jos' wife Hanane is also looking for him as she wants her son, who has been living with him illegally for the last two years, returned to her.