On the morning of 22 April 2026, a cargo vessel named the Arconian slipped out of the Freetown port and headed north along the African coast. Its manifest declared its destination as Benghazi, Libya. Spain investigators believe that was never where it was going.
Ten days later, on 1 May, Spain’s Guardia Civil the elite law enforcement unit that investigates serious organised crime intercepted the ship in international waters off the coast of Western Sahara, near the Moroccan-controlled city of Dakhla. When officers boarded and prised open the vessel’s holds, what they found would rewrite the record books. Preliminary reports suggest the cargo contained between 30,000 and 45,000 kilograms of cocaine, with final assessments expected to put the total closer to 50,000 kilograms a street value of between €3 billion and €3.5 billion. Spain’s Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, told reporters in Madrid that the operation would rank as one of the largest drug seizures not just in Spain, but in the world.
The Arconian had just left Freetown. It was registered in the Comoros Islands. It is listed as owned by a company in Sierra Leone. And according to investigators and Dutch media reports that have gained traction across Europe, it is suspected of being linked to one of the continent’s most wanted men a man who, by multiple accounts, has been living openly in Sierra Leone for nearly two years.
The Arconian, measuring 91 metres in length with a deadweight tonnage of 4,347, was observed making its way north along the African coast after departing Freetown on April 22. The vessel, flying the Comoros flag, was escorted into the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on Sunday afternoon by a Guardia Civil patrol boat, with 23 crew members taken into custody upon arrival. Among those arrested were 17 Filipino nationals responsible for the operation of the vessel and six Congolese individuals who acted as armed guards on the ship, reportedly to prevent pirate theft.
The scale and organisation of the operation extended beyond the single vessel. Spain’s Interior Minister subsequently confirmed that the Arconian functioned as a “mothership” a floating supply platform intended to transfer cocaine at sea to smaller, faster boats that would then ferry the drugs into small European ports away from major customs scrutiny. Extra fuel was also discovered on board, consistent with the practice of refuelling the go-fast boats used in the final stage of the smuggling route.
It has since emerged that the Arconian had been kept under continuous surveillance by Spanish authorities after it set sail from Freetown meaning the Guardia Civil were tracking the vessel from the moment it left Sierra Leonean waters. Until February 2026, the Arconian had actually been registered under Sierra Leone’s flag, switching to the Comoros registry only in the weeks before it departed.
No aspect of this story has generated more attention in European capitals than the question of who orchestrated it. Due to the scale of the cocaine shipment, the presence of Dutch nationals among those detained, and Sierra Leone as the departure point, sources within both the underworld and law enforcement told Dutch media that Jos Leijdekkers known internationally as “Bolle Jos” is considered the most likely suspect to have masterminded the operation. Spanish investigators have not officially named suspects; the case remains under judicial seal at Spain’s National Court.
Leijdekkers, known as “Bolle Jos” meaning “Chubby Jos” in Dutch has been sentenced in absentia by courts in the Netherlands and Belgium to a combined total of several decades in prison for cocaine smuggling, assault, armed robbery, and ordering an assassination attempt. He is on Europol’s most-wanted list and is considered one of the key players in international cocaine trafficking. Courts in Belgium and the Netherlands sentenced him in absentia to a combined 57 years for multiple offences, and he was separately ordered to pay €96 million to the Dutch state in the country’s largest-ever proceeds of crime case.
Investigations by Dutch outlets Follow the Money and Algemeen Dagblad revealed that Leijdekkers embedded himself in Sierra Leone’s political circles, operating under the alias Omar Sheriff. Dutch media have previously reported that Leijdekkers is allegedly engaged to Agnes Bio, daughter of President Julius Maada Bio, and that the two have a child together. The Bio administration has not formally confirmed or denied the relationship.
The Netherlands has been pressing Sierra Leone for Leijdekkers’ extradition since at least February 2025. Dutch caretaker Prime Minister Dick Schoof directly raised the matter with President Bio during an EU-African Union summit in Angola, but Sierra Leone has no extradition treaty with the Netherlands a legal gap that has made transfer all but impossible regardless of political will.
Journalists in Sierra Leone who have investigated Leijdekkers’ presence and alleged operations in the country have faced harassment, raids, and arrest. Three editors told European investigators that they fear not only for press freedom, but for the future of their nation.
Sierra Leone’s Office of National Security issued a formal press release on 7 May 2026, the first official government statement since the Arconian story broke internationally. The release was calibrated in its language. The Security Sector acknowledged the media reports, confirmed that both the Sierra Leone Ports and Harbours Authority and the Sierra Leone Police had not received any official communication from Spanish authorities, and stated that preliminary inquiries and inter-agency assessments had already commenced to establish the facts surrounding the vessel, its voyage history, and port movements. Anyone with credible information was directed to contact the Head of the Criminal Investigations Department.
What the release did not address was the Leijdekkers dimension the series of European investigative reports and Dutch government communications that have, over the past eighteen months, placed a convicted international drug trafficker at the intersection of Sierra Leone’s port economy and its political establishment. Nor did it account for the fact that the Arconian had been under active Spanish surveillance from the moment it left Freetown raising questions about what a thorough inter-agency port assessment of the vessel’s history will actually disclose.
Sierra Leone has long been identified by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime as a major hub for cocaine shipped or flown from South America to West Africa, where it is divided up and routed onward primarily to Western Europe. The Arconian seizure is, in that sense, not an anomaly but an escalation: the largest single manifest yet of a trafficking infrastructure that has been building, by all international accounts, for years.
The case is currently before Spain’s National Court. Twenty-three crew members remain in Spanish custody. Spanish investigators are probing whether Leijdekkers orchestrated the shipment from Sierra Leone, where he is believed to have established a base of operations under the protection of influential local figures.
Read Also: A Ship Left Freetown With 40 Tonnes of Cocaine. Spain’s Civil Guard Intercepted It.
In Freetown, the Security Sector has pledged to undertake all necessary verification processes. Whether that investigation reaches the questions that European governments and investigative journalists have been asking about port governance, vessel registration, institutional protection of a convicted international fugitive, and the relationship between Sierra Leone’s political establishment and its emerging role in the global cocaine economy remains to be seen.
