How Dutch Cocaine Trafficker Jos Leijdekkers Embedded Himself in Sierra Leone
One of the world’s most prolific cocaine traffickers has reportedly pulled off what investigative journalists are calling his boldest move yet: embedding himself so deeply within a West African nation’s political elite that some now describe it as having effectively bought the country. The man at the center of the story is Jos Leijdekkers, a Dutch fugitive known in criminal circles as “Chubby Jos,” whose network is estimated to generate more than $2 billion a year in cocaine trafficking revenue.
According to reporting by Alexander Clapp in The Economist, Leijdekkers rose from working as a hitman in the Netherlands to running a global smuggling operation over the course of roughly a decade. Cocaine bricks stamped with his underworld nickname “Holly,” short for Hollywood, have reportedly turned up on multiple continents. Clapp writes that Leijdekkers’s takeover of Sierra Leone now appears to be his most audacious operation to date.
Investigative reporting from the Dutch outlet Follow the Money and the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, along with additional reporting from the Swiss paper NZZ, traces how Leijdekkers slipped into Sierra Leone in 2022 under the alias “Omar Sheriff.” From there, he is reported to have built influence spanning from the capital’s slums to the inner circle surrounding President Julius Maada Bio, allegedly helping to reroute a significant share of Latin America’s cocaine trade through the country’s ports and airstrips.
Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, has placed a 200,000 euro bounty on Leijdekkers, listing him among the continent’s most wanted fugitives. Despite that status, reporting suggests he has continued to operate with apparent ease within Sierra Leone, reportedly holding a diplomatic passport and allegedly bankrolling elements of the country’s security forces. According to Follow the Money, he is said to control clandestine airstrips in the country’s interior as well as port facilities in the capital, with police officers and soldiers allegedly on his payroll to help protect drug shipments.
Opposition activists in Sierra Leone have circulated videos on social media purporting to show Leijdekkers embracing senior officials, including the country’s former police chief, footage cited as evidence of his integration into the nation’s ruling establishment. Reporting also points to a personal relationship between Leijdekkers and a member of President Bio’s family as part of what journalists describe as the arrangement securing his position within the country.
Leijdekkers’s history extends well beyond Sierra Leone. According to reporting from the Pulitzer Center, he previously handled operations through the port of Antwerp, one of Europe’s largest, as part of a loose alliance of major traffickers based in Dubai during the late 2010s, a group some in law enforcement referred to as a “super cartel.” Courts in multiple jurisdictions have already found him guilty of drug trafficking and violent offenses, even as he remains at large.
The reporting paints a portrait of a fugitive who has effectively found refuge not by hiding from the world, but by making himself indispensable to it, raising uncomfortable questions about the vulnerability of small, resource-strapped states to the enormous financial firepower of transnational organized crime. As journalists continue investigating the extent of his influence, Sierra Leone’s government has yet to publicly address the mounting allegations surrounding one of Europe’s most wanted men operating seemingly in plain sight.
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