Sierra Leone’s president has fired the head of the immigration service days after footage was published showing him receiving a birthday gift from a fugitive Dutch drug kingpin.
The footage of Alusine Kanneh being handed a present by Johannes Leijdekkers – which has not been independently verified by the Guardian – was published by the investigative outlet Follow the Money and the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad on Friday.
The dinner is understood to have been held in an upmarket restaurant in Freetown, the country’s capital.
Leijdekkers, 33, one of Europe’s most wanted fugitives, was sentenced in absentia to 24 years in prison for drug smuggling by a Rotterdam court last June.
Kanneh was relieved of his duties the same day the reports were published but authorities in Freetown did not disclose the reason for his dismissal in a short statement by the presidential secretary.
For months speculation has swirled in the west African country that Kanneh and other members of the political elite had been helping Leijdekkers accumulate influence.
In February, a Guardian investigation established that Leijdekkers had been in the country since at least 2022 and had spent time at nightclubs and house parties.
A Reuters report in January placed him at a New Year’s Day church service in President Julius Maada Bio’s home town, sitting near the leader’s daughter Agnes Bio, with whom he is believed to be in a relationship.
Days before that event, the immigration ministry introduced an investment-for-citizenship scheme under Kanneh’s direction. Called Go-for-Gold, it offers a fast-track path to citizenship in 90 days for investors willing to pay $140,000 (£108,000). The traditional route to naturalisation involves eight years’ residence.
Leijdekkers has a passport from Turkey, where he previously resided after going on the run from Dutch authorities. It is unknown if he has Sierra Leonean documentation too.
At a press conference in January, Sierra Leonean police said their own investigations had established that the church service footage depicted a man called Omar Sheriff. The country’s police chief, William Fayia Sellu, declined to say at the time whether Sheriff and Leijdekkers were the same person.
Leijdekkers, who has assumed numerous aliases and nicknames, including Bolle Jos, was sentenced in absentia by a Rotterdam court last June to 24 years in prison for six drug transports totalling 7,000kg of cocaine, an armed robbery in Finland, and ordering the murder of an associate. He received a 10-year sentence in absentia by a court in Belgium in September over an attempt to smuggle drugs via the port of Antwerp in 2020.
Organised criminal groups have long used west African countries as a staging post for cocaine shipments from South America to Europe. The revelations about Leijdekkers come at an awkward moment for the authorities in Sierra Leone, which earlier this year recalled its ambassador from neighbouring Guinea after seven suitcases containing suspected cocaine were found in an embassy vehicle.
Dutch officials are still in discussions to extradite Leijdekkers, even though Sierra Leone does not have a formal extradition treaty with the Netherlands.
Sources in Freetown told the Guardian that Sierra Leone’s government wanted to swap Leijdekkers for the Netherlands-based influential social commentator Abdul Will Kamara, AKA Adebayor, whose videos and long WhatsApp voice notes are popular among older people and those in rural areas.
Officials and ruling party supporters claim he incited deadly riots in 2022 in the capital and north of the country that left at least 26 civilians and six police officers dead.
In February, the information minister, Chernor Bah, said two attempts to extradite Adebayor had been unsuccessful. Bah was approached for comment on Monday.
