Seated in a pew in Sierra Leone, one of Europe’s most wanted cocaine traffickers is seen in a video at a New Year’s Day mass last year in the presence of President Julius Maada Bio.
Afterwards, the country’s first lady had posted the video on Facebook, where people eventually recognised the figure as “Bolle Jos,” the fugitive Dutch drug lord.
The convicted prolific smuggler, whose real name is Joseph Johannes Leijdekkers, is considered by Europol a most-wanted criminal and “key player” in global cocaine trafficking.
Dutch police have offered a two-million-euro ($2.2-million) reward for information on him.
AFP gathered information from law enforcement, local testimonies and court documents which show the 35-year-old trafficker operating in Sierra Leone with apparent support from the highest echelons of power.
Dutch authorities lost track of Leijdekkers, whose nickname means “Chubby Jos” in Dutch, for several years and said in 2023 they believed he could be in Turkiye.
After the New Year’s 2025 video, Sierra Leone police announced they had launched a manhunt for a man named Omar Sheriff but authorities soon went quiet on the matter.
AFP was not able to independently verify the video or others mentioned in this article.
Leijdekkers — who also uses the alias Omar Sheriff, according to Europol — is thought to have arrived in the west African country from as early as 2023, according to media reports and a local source.
His rap sheet is long.
Overall, more than a hundred years of prison sentences have been handed down to Leijdekkers in the Netherlands and Belgium.
He was, for example, sentenced in absentia two years ago to 24 years in prison in the Netherlands for drug trafficking, armed robbery and ordering an assassination.
Among other allegations, he is suspected of involvement in the 2019 disappearance of Naima Jillal, a drug trafficker nicknamed “Madame Coke,” who was linked to the Dutch-Moroccan Mocro Maffia involved in drug trafficking and production.
Europol has said she was almost certainly tortured and most likely dead.
