Fugitive drug lord ‘Bolle Jos’ gets 13 years in Belgium for failed €250M cocaine heist
A Belgian court sentenced fugitive drug trafficker Jos Leijdekkers, known as ‘Bolle Jos,’ to 13 years in prison on Tuesday for orchestrating a failed heist of 10 tons of cocaine that had been seized by Antwerp customs.
The 33-year-old Leijdekkers, originally from Brabant, was convicted in absentia. Prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence. According to the court, he directed an armed team that attempted to retrieve the cocaine, which had been discovered hidden in a shipment of soybean meal on Oct. 16, 2023.
Authorities had moved the container to a secured warehouse to extract the cocaine, valued at 250 million euros. Criminals tracked the shipment using electronic trackers. When two armed men approached the warehouse, police were called. Shortly after, seven armed Dutch nationals were intercepted in a van and arrested. They were each sentenced to 10 years in prison. In total, 19 suspects were on trial for the case.
Leijdekkers was identified as the mastermind after Dutch police received a tip linking the shipment to him. Wiretapped prison conversations further implicated him. One of the arrested men was overheard saying he was in custody “because of Bolle Jos.”
Rotterdam sentence
Leijdekkers is already a convicted criminal in Belgium and remains one of Europe’s most wanted fugitives. In June 2024, he was sentenced in absentia by a Rotterdam court to 24 years in prison for large-scale cocaine trafficking and ordering an assassination. That case involved the import of 7,000 kilos of cocaine into the Netherlands.
The court found him guilty of commissioning the murder of Robin van Ouwekerk, a key suspect in the so-called ‘torture container’ case in Wouwse Plantage. The murder was never carried out, possibly because the hired killer was arrested in an unrelated case. Leijdekkers had offered a 200,000 euros bounty for the hit. The court described his willingness to order violence as “chilling” and “almost frivolous.”
Regarding the `torture container`, Dutch police uncovered a secret torture chamber in a warehouse in Noord-Brabant in 2020, revealing a chilling criminal operation. The facility consisted of soundproofed shipping containers modified for imprisonment and torture. Inside, authorities found dentist chairs with restraints, waterboarding equipment, and a mobile operating table.
Overall, Dutch prosecutors linked Leijdekkers to at least six major drug shipments from South and Central America to the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp between 2019 and 2020. Another cocaine shipment intended for him was mistakenly sent to Finland. His associates attempted to violently reclaim the shipment from a legitimate company that had unknowingly received the container, injuring an employee in the process.
Leijdekkers has been on the run for years and is on both the Dutch National Most Wanted List and the EU Most Wanted List. Authorities have offered a 200,000 euros reward for information leading to his capture.
