Spanish police found a staggering amount of cocaine on a ship intercepted off the Canary Islands on Friday. This is the largest shipment ever seized at sea: between 30 and 45 tons of cocaine. Several Dutch nationals were arrested during the operation.
The drugs have an estimated street value of more than 1.5 billion euros and were found at the Arconian. That ship was seized on Friday by a special unit of the Spanish Guardia Civil. There were approximately 1,500 packages of 25 to 30 kilos of drugs each on board.
A total of 23 people were arrested during the police operation. According to various international media, this mainly concerns the Dutch, Filipinos and Angolans.
The vessel was then transferred from the coast of Western Sahara to a naval base in the Canary Islands. The Arconian sails under the flag of the Comoros and left Freetown in Sierra Leone on April 22. According to the specified route, the ship was bound for the port of Benghazi in Libya.
‘Bolle Jos’ Leijdekkers
Due to the enormous scale of the cocaine transport and the link with Sierra Leone, sources in the underworld quickly provide direction ‘Bolle Jos’ Leijdekkers pointed out. But nowadays his name is associated with almost every major drug transport intercepted in Europe.
Leijdekkers is the most wanted criminal in the Netherlands and has to serve a 24-year sentence in the Netherlands for drug trafficking and violence. In Belgium, the number of years in prison has now increased to 57 years.
A.D and Follow the Money revealed in early 2025 that Bolle Jos had been in hiding in Sierra Leone for at least a year. He is said to have a relationship with the president’s daughter and to have bribed several rulers in the country. On Wednesday, his father, mother and sister will appear in court in the Netherlands on suspicion of money laundering.
