Government pushes EU to cut Sierra Leone aid over drug smuggling

The Dutch government wants the European Union to halt development aid to Sierra Leone, in an attempt to force the West African country to hand over convicted drug trafficker Jos “Bolle Jos” Leijdekkers.

Justice minister David van Weel said on Sunday that diplomatic efforts to secure Leijdekkers’ extradition had stalled, and that the government would now try to apply pressure through the EU’s aid budget.

He told the talk show Buitenhof it was “bizarre” that the Netherlands is still helping to fund a country sheltering one of its most wanted criminals.

The European Commission has allocated €352 million in grants to Sierra Leone for 2021 to 2027. The Netherlands gives the country almost no aid of its own, and cutting the EU funding would need the backing of the commission and other member states.

A presidential link

Leijdekkers, known as Bolle Jos, has been sentenced in the Netherlands and Belgium to terms that Van Weel says total 80 years. He is thought to be living in Sierra Leone, where, according to several reports, he is in a relationship with a daughter of president Julius Maada Bio – a connection that may be complicating efforts to remove him.

Van Weel said he estimated that Leijdekkers earns “hundreds of millions of euros” a month – more, the minister said, than Sierra Leone’s entire annual national income.

Sierra Leone’s gross national income is about €6.4 billion a year according to World Bank data. Leijdekkers was ordered to pay €96 million to the Dutch state last year in the country’s biggest-ever proceeds-of-crime case.

Aborted arrests

Dutch marines and police special forces twice came close to seizing Leijdekkers off Sierra Leone this month, according to De Telegraaf, but both attempts were called off at the last minute. The public prosecution department would neither confirm nor deny the account, but said his arrest remained its highest priority.

Van Weel also linked Leijdekkers to the record cocaine shipment of more than 30 tonnes intercepted off the Canary Islands this month, which had sailed from the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown.

The port has become a significant hub in the drugs trade: the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime estimates that around a third of the cocaine reaching Europe now passes through West Africa.

The minister said he had “no illusion” that diplomacy alone would resolve the case.