The Underworld Podcast - The Narco Fugitive who Took Over an African Country

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

When a 2023 club brawl ended in a Freetown, Sierra Leone parking lot shooting, cops and reporters pointed the finger at “Omar Shariff,” a portly Turkish millionaire who’d spent much of the past six months throwing cash about at the city’s casinos and top-end restaurants. But Shariff wasn’t Turkish, and he wasn’t just any businessman. And as information about the strange man leaked over the coming year, officials in Africa and Europe began to realize that he was in fact one of the Netherlands’ biggest cocaine kingpins, one who’d been on the run from authorities for years — and whose commitment to cartel violence had extended to the construction of a shipping-container torture center. What happened next was a lesson in how organized criminals evade justice by corrupting power. And how cocaine traffickers, from Suriname to Sierra Leone, have taken over the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can social media your thing, generate images or videos of your thing, make decks for presentations to show your thing. Whatever needs to be done for your thing, Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. It's 2 a.m. on New Year's Day, 2023. Outside Scarlet, an upmarket nightclub in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Part of a complex of bars, restaurants, and a casino that sit within the Lagunda Resort on the West African City's Atlantic coast.

Since 2002, when Sierra Leone's civil war ended, violence is rare in its ramshackle capital. But as the club's crowd swells and a cue to get in snakes through the hotel lobby, that piece is about to be shattered in style. Hussein Fawaz is among those lining up for a spot at Scarlet. He's the nephew of one of Sierra Leone's Lebanese tycoons, one of three towns elites. But another man joins the action. and he's in no mood to wait, no matter who is in front. This man is lean, tanned, well-built, in his 30s,

and he's flanked by a giant of a bodyguard and several other members of his entourage. Nobody seems to know the man's name, though. Fawaz doesn't care. He kicks up a fuss about the line. Voices are raised, so are fists. Soon there's a fraccar outside the club, which Fawaz escalates deathly by smashing a glass bottle over the bodyguard's head. The fracker becomes a brawl and it spreads. Yet the whole time the Sand Stranger keeps his distance keen not to get dragged into the melee.

The violence soon ends and the revelers head inside to continue their night. But if you're glancing a 300-pound bodyguard, chances are that something's coming back your way. An hours later, as Fawaz leaves Scarlet, he's cornered once again in the parking lot. Some say by the bodyguard, Others by the Tanned Man. Seven shots ring out into the night, for Waz jumps to the ground, writhing in agony, clutching the kneecaps that have been blown almost clean off. The club shooting quickly makes headlines all over Sierra Leone. But something's not right.

Nobody can figure out the identity of the lean, tanned man. Staff at the Lagunda's casino say he was a frequent high roller, tipping up to $1,000 at the time. He was a gentleman, says one of them. Soft-spoken, always apologetic, following all our rules. He doesn't drink, he doesn't chase women. Stranger still, on some days he goes about claiming to be Turkish, on others Moroccan. But witnesses are sure they've heard him speaking to his cliquing Dutch,

and even rarer tongue in this war-torn corner of West Africa. Before long, media give the man a name, Omar Sharif. He's a minor investor, right, some of them. Others are stopped in their tracks. One investigative reporter receives a visit from a mysterious man who, refusing to give his name, tells the reporter clearly, drop the scoop. The matter, the envoy promises, is, quote, in the president's hands. The reporter does what he's told, and the shooting fades from memory.

But two years later, the tale of the Turkish mining magnate with deep pockets will come crashing into view once more. Only, well of course, the man is no Turk. And the only thing he's interested in mining is cash from the world's most popular party narcotic. In fact, Tiny Sierra Leone has found itself the new home of one of the planet's most wanted men. And he's wrapped himself around Freetown's power structures tighter than a boa constrictor on a comatose back. This is the underworld podcast. Hello, everybody.

and welcome to another thrilling edition of the weekly podcast. We're two seasons. Some might say bitter and cynical. I wouldn't say that personally. Someone might take a look at organized crime around the world. I'm Sean Williams. I'm in Buenos Aires, I'm Quintina, and I am joined by Danny Gold in New York City.

Thanks for listening. If you like these shows, we've got a Patreon full of bonuses, news roundups, interviews, all kinds of interesting folks. Patreon.com forward slash the underworld podcast. Merch, Underworld Podcast. and reach out. We want to hear from you, the Underworld Podcast at gmail.com. Is anything I'm missing? Some banter. I don't know. How about these are sports boards,

huh? They can also sign up on Spotify and on iTunes. And I must say, hell of a cold open right there. Dude, I'm intrigued as hell. Also, spent some time in Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis. Lovely spot would recommend human as hell, though. Yeah. I don't think I'm going to paint it in the best light right now, but it sounds like a great place. especially when there's a major outbreak of an incredibly deadly disease. So, yeah. That is when I was there. Yeah.

Beaches, though. They got beaches. Oh, cool. Okay. So you can die on the sand. But anyway. I think there's a surf scene. Maybe the surf scenes in Liberia.

Oh, well, that's good by story. There might be a surf scene there. Yeah. We like to say on this show that these are cautionary tales about cautionary tales. And today's show is a prime example. It is Exhibit A of how the cocaine trace. has seeped into just about every corner of planet in the past decade. So how if like law enforcement or the judiciary squeezes the balloon in one place,

it just pops out in another? You know, I prefer like a whack-a-mole sort of comparison. We still have whack-a-mole? They still have whack-a-mole and like fun-time arcade centers, like SportsTime USA shout-out. Or do the kids just play virtual whack-a-mole on like Roblox? Hideous. I don't know. Whatever they're doing, it's not cool.

And I don't like young people. Yeah, this is like a great example, this show of how drug laws worm their way into positions of power, corrupting not only the cops and border guards who turn a blind eye, but entire governments of the developing world. Today, of course, being Sierra Leone, a small nation, 8.6 million people surrounded by Guinea, Liberia and the Atlantic Ocean, a surprising location for the stronghold of a European kingpin on Europol's most wanted list, perhaps. But if you've listened to our episodes on nearby Guinea-Bissau, or Nigeria, you are going to know that trafficking drugs from Latin America into Europe has been a massive part of the West African criminal underworld going back decades.

Yeah, really shady sort of like Hezbollah and Beka Valley types. Oh, yeah. Love the set of shop in these parts of the world of West Africa. Major, major transit routes to the contraband and, like for contraband and money. I think the Colombians have presences there. The Mexicans have presence of there. And Drongeta. I mean, that's all relatively recent, but the shady sort of like Valley families.

I think clans have had presence there for decades. Yeah, I think in the Guinea-Bissau episode, there was a great article I read at the Virginia Quarterly Review where the guy was like hanging out with Hezbollah guys in Bissau, the capital, there's pretty nuts. I want to do a show on Hezbollah in Latin America as well, because there's quite a lot of interesting stuff happening here. Anyway, you might remember Sierra Leone from our episode on Sam Walker. I can't say his name without laughing. Anyway, he's the British gangster from Liverpool who made it his home for. for a while. He like fled, fled justice over land and sea to Sierra Leone, opening water

wells for charity while I think slipping diamonds out of the country in the other direction. He is the guy who DM'd me after the episode with a photo of my mum and dad's house, which is really lovely. And he's also spent half the past year in hospital having been stabbed shot and beaten half to dead with a golf club. So, yeah, nice bloke. Are you saying him setting that photo and what him being in the hospital for half a year after getting shot, stabbed and beaten, are they related? No, no. I did not have a major gangster shot and stabbed and beaten nearly to death with a golf club.

No. Also, DMing someone like a Google map photo of the house is such a lame cop out, like to be in. Like, you found a publicly available address and at least have the criminal decency and wherewithal to send an underling to take a real photo of it. Oh, damn. I should have brought up my Instagram account now and seen the message. because it was so like scouse. I think like wait, if I could find it right now, it's really, really funny. I'll chime in with something. I think we got to comment on on YouTube, maybe like

a couple weeks ago from someone who was like, oh, I can't believe you guys have done an episode on this guy. He's such a, I don't know, you use some English in some bell end or whatever, phony or whatever. And we're like, I'm like, yeah, dude, listen to the episode. Yeah. Don't just comment, like listen to the actual episode and see what we say. Yeah, I can't find it. I'll have to like put it up on the on the chat at some point. But anyway, if you know Sierra Leone at all outside of those way more famous things to do with me, you might know it for its civil war, which is a brutal conflict was fueled by blood diamonds and it lasted for 11 years, 1991 to 2002. And it was marked by widespread atrocities

and the use of child soldiers. Well, those child soldiers were themselves fueled by a cocktail of drugs, not least cocaine, marijuana, prescription pills and so-called Brown Brown. which is a mixture of cocaine or meth with gunpowder, which is interesting. Here's a short extract from the harrowing book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Bayer. Quote, when we ran out of food, drugs, ammunition and gasoline to watch war films, we raided rebel camps in towns, villages and forests. We also attacked civilian villages to capture recruits and whatever else we could find. We walked for long hours and stopped only to eat sardines and corned beef with flour,

sniff cocaine, brown, brown and take some white capsule. The combination of these drugs gave us a lot of energy and made us fierce. The idea of death didn't cross my mind at all, and killing had become as easy as drinking water. My mind had not only snapped during the first killing, it had also stopped making remorseful records. So that was a bit of a handbrake turned from chatting about a funny Liverpool gangster. But, yeah, drugs have been a staple of Sierra Leone's war, mesmerizing all these kids into killing each other. I think Beasts of No Nation is a really great movie that's based on this stuff. But in the wake of the war, even though almost half the country's population lives in extreme poverty,

violence and street crime actually take a nosedive. A major crime is confined to Sierra Leone's mining and logging industries. West African drug transshipment is usually the preserve of Guinea-Bissal, which I just mentioned before, it's an even smaller country but whose geography is perfect for narcos, whether they've got boats landing in the capital Bissal or the small planes touching down on one of 88 islands sprinkling out from the African mainland into the Atlantic. And they're aided by the fact that it has one prison with one prison guard, a single patrol boat, cops with no radios or handcuffs and no air defense. It says of the DA agent to the Guardian report Ed Valiami in 2008, quote, A place like Guinea Bissau is a failed state anyway. So it's like moving into an empty house.

You walk in, buy the services you need from the government, army and people, and take over. Definitely listen to that show. It's from way back in April 2022. And if you want to know how drugs get from nations on the West African coast through the Sahara Desert, which is an insanely like a dangerous trip. We did an episode on the El Chapo of the Sahel back in December 2020. I mean, at this point, you could just teach a course with all these episodes, you know, you wouldn't have to do any work. Yeah, or maybe sell the IP to a rich Hollywood producer who could give us money. Try that. Yeah. I've tried that a bunch of times. Yeah, the last part of that sentence. That never appears. Anyway, another link in this chain is Hezbollah. Danny just mentioned, I really want to do a Hezbo-Marco trafficking episode soon.

Yeah, they are in West Africa. Hence the Lebanese connection you heard in the Cold Open. There is lots of crazy stuff happening in West Africa, which I probably didn't need to tell you. But not for the longest time in Sierra Leone, which makes the emergence of Joss Leidica's, aka Bola Joss or Chubby Joss in the capital Free Town or the more surprising. It's kind of funny they go for chubbing set up like the usual American mafia, like Fat Tony, Fat Sal.

I mean, to say something about the Dutch that they went for chubbing instead of just fat? I mean, you met Dutch people before. They're pretty happy, go lucky, charming bunch. A little strange. Yeah. A lot of the backbone for today's show comes from an excellent feature at New Lines magazine from last July. And I also interview one of the authors,

Joseph Skirdlick, around a month ago. We will hear a bit of. bit from him in a while. But first, let's find out who Chubby Joss is, where he came from, and how he came to rewrite as one of the most significant cocaine kingpins in Europe, if not the world. Lydicus is born in July 1991 in Prince and Bic, a village on the edge of Breda, which is a city close to the Dutch border with Belgium, particularly the port of Antwerp. Don't know anything about his mother, but his father owns a prominent brothel in Breda, which you know, it's the Netherlands, so nothing illegal about that. But this is a time when Dutch

mafiosia beginning to dominate the cocaine industry across Europe, mastering the so-called rip-on-rip-off method of bringing product on boats, usually in shipping containers, but sometimes strapped to ships' holes from Latin America to the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. Now, many of them are pairing up with Dutch Moroccan gangsters like Riddle and Taggy, folks who've made their names ferrying hash across the harsh rift mountains, but also with Dutch Surinamese outlaws who are bringing great quantities of coke and ecstasy across the Atlantic with the help of both belligerents in the Surinamese Civil War. Recent episode, that, check it out, had a bunch of fun research in it. And tons of this drug money is being laundered through Dutch colonial possessions in the Caribbean,

notably Aruba and Kurichow. It is a whole thing. And by the early 2010s, Josh Lydikas, this portly hustler with short spiky hair, who looks like he's about to compete at a second-tier darts tournament, he is getting deeply involved. In 2011, age just 20, Lydikers gets into a bar brawl with two Moroccan brothers in Breda, supposedly over the use of a bar stall. They head outside, Lydikas pulls a pistol, and he opens fire. He wings one brother and he puts the other one in intensive care. Both guys survive, but Lydica's cops are double attempted man. manslaughter charge and he is sentenced to six years in prison. This will be the making of him. While inside, Lydikers meets Pete Vortel, or Wirtle, a veteran narco who's been shipping product from

Surinam to the Netherlands with the help of its president. The pair become friends. Above all, it seems like young Lydikers has learned from Wirtle that it's more profitable to forge ties with political elites in the developing world instead of threatening them or going against them. lessons learned, Lydacus then gets out of prison in 2015. He marries, has kids, and 2017 moves to a suburb of Antwerp. Yet, writes new lines, quote, the facade of middle-class banality hit a more sordid truth. Here is Joseph again who co-wrote that sentence for more.

So in 2011, he is in prison. He gets out in 2015. And very soon afterwards, he very quickly arises. in the hierarchy over the international cocaine trade. But I think this is not known. This only becomes known in 2019 when the Dutch, in 2019, 2020 and 2020 and 2021, when the Dutch authorities and authorities or other European states hack Sky ECC, which is a messaging, encryptive messaging system that the criminals like Lakers were using. And it turns out that during this period, he was organizing large hockey shipments between Latin America. America and Belgium and the Netherlands, earning tens of millions of euros a year, according to the estimates.

By the time this fact is established, he is already not living in the Netherlands. Yes, folks, this is another story that comes out of Sky ECC. That is an encrypted chat app that was hacked by European cops back in 2021. I mean, pretty much any major European organized crime story today, you're going to find a ton of the information came out of this groundbreaking hack. 2019 is when things are really heating up over the Dutch cocaine trade. Authorities have just begun something called the Marengo trial, which is an attempt to prosecute 14 murders carried out between 2015 and 2017, and it's held in a purpose-built

bunker courthouse similar to the one from Palermo's Maxi trial of the 1980s. Witnesses, they're getting dropped left and right, hits allegedly being ordered from Whitney and Tagge's Dubai Villa. Media called the Netherlands quote, Valhalla for drugs criminals, while 59% of respondents to one poll say they think that their country is a narco state. Later that year, Dubai cops arrest Taggi and his right-hand man,

who right now have contacts all over Latin America, particularly Colombia, with the help of Mexico's Gulf Cartel. Other kingpins, they are dropping like flies as the Sky ECC hack bears fruit, But Lydikers, despite working in the same circles as these guys and using the same app for comms, evades justice. Why? Because he's already left the Netherlands.

Now, he is shacked up with his wife and kids in Istanbul, Turkey, in a glass-fronted villa overlooking the boss for us, laundering millions through fake companies and smuggling gold bullion into Dubai on private jets. What's going on with Taghi, by the way? Is he locked up for good? Is that what's going on? Yeah, I think he got a massive. sentence. I think he's, he's gonzo, yeah. And

like we were saying in last week's show, like Dubai cops, they actually do do stuff every 10 years or so. It's not what it was, man. No, definitely not. And it is from this literal glass tower that Lydikas begins to craft a distinct brand

identity based, according to the New Line's article quote on the indiscriminate use of violence. Although I would argue it's pretty discriminant, actually. One of the earliest to suffer this new rough is Namer Jalal, a 52-year-old Dutch Moroccan woman nicknamed the godmother of cocaine. Jalal has spent years brokering huge coke deals between cartels in Costa Rica and Ecuador and Europe from her home in Marbea, which is in southern Spain. But in 2018, Jalalal is accused of getting

too greedy, selling more container space on ships than there actually is like some kind of timeshare mogul. And in 2019, whispers that she's a snitch. crescendo when Dutch cops pull off a huge cocaine bust in Rotterdam, costing the Dutch underworld tens of millions of dollars. On October 20, 2019, Jalal is seen getting into a black BMW outside her apartment in Amsterdam. She's never seen again. Two months later, in the fallout of the Sky ECC Bust and Riddell and Taggie's arrest, cops make a grim discovery on Taggie's confiscated BlackBerry. I mean, people still using BlackBerry in 2019. Shocking. In crypt, Blackguard was known for their encryption, man.

Like they were known for... Of course, they're like pins and stuff like this, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what they find are photos of a naked woman tied to a chair, beaten with a finger and toe amputated. They've been taking on the same night as Jalau's disappearance. Police believe it's her, that she's dead and that three men ordered her liquidation.

One of them, they say, doesn't live in the Netherlands, and his name is Joss Lydikas. But that's not all. In June 2020, police discover a clandestine prison complex hidden in a warehouse on the Dutch-Belgian border. This cluster of soundproof shipping containers, all covered in plastic sheeting, includes six with handcuffs attached to the floor or ceilings, chemical toilets and one with a dentist chair fitted with wrist straps. Pretty grim. They also find scalples, sores, pruning shears and blow torches, while each container is kidded out with a camera. They can't pin the complex directly to Jalal's death, but how many torture chambers can there be on the Dutch Belgian border? Ones that aren't affiliated with kink clubs, maybe, I don't know, like three dozen.

I'm leaving you an open goal there. You can have it. No, I mean, that's too grim and too easy. You know, but also, Jesus Christ, man, this is like Mexican cartel level of savagery right here. Yeah, it's pretty awful stuff. All right, guys, a quick break from smugglers, kingpins, and highly organized crime to tell you about a different type

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Visit rula.com slash underworld to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's RULA.A.com slash underworld. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. Go to Rula.com slash underworld to get started today. that's rula.com slash underworld for quality therapy that's covered by insurance um and lydic has moved so much cocaine so easily because he spends a lot of his money bribing dock workers at antwerp and

rotterdam which is like if you look at european drug trafficking it's where the lion's share of stuff is coming in in august 2020 when a security guard disrupts a half-ton shipment in antwerp Lydicus dispatches a team of men to go after the guy. Take him hostage, Lydikas tells them via Sky ECC. Shoot his knees if he struggles. The goons beat the guard badly and they drag into a nearby container. Lydikas is even wanted by cops in Finland for quarterbacking an armed robbery there. He's become a full-blown, deadly gangster by this point.

Like you say, it's like Mexican stuff, really. He is wanted by authorities all over the place. Some say he even orders a hit on the guy who built his torture chambers, like some medieval Indian king or something. Here's Joseph Skirdlek again. While a lot of his associates are subject to arrests, he is living in Turkey, which at the time was a notoriously lenient towards international criminals. So this is around 2020, where he applied for a Turkish residency, and I think it took some time for, so took some time for, the Dutch authorities to put pressure on the Turkish authorities to actually arrest him. And what happens in March, 2017-1, is that Lidekerces' residence permit in Turkey is revoked.

And from then, his variables are unknown. His brother-in-law was arrested later in 1993, and also for like a very strange reason, he gets to give an interview to a Turkish investigative journalist. And in that interview, he says that when Ralaida Karas's residence permit was revoked, he traveled to Abkhazia and then to Russia, which gives rise to a lot of speculations that he could be, that he could actually be hiding in Russia because no one knows where he isn't a big mister. He's very wanted. So there are speculations he could be in Russia, he could be in Turkey. But actually, during all his time, he is living a very good life in Sierra Leone's Omar Sharif. buying like their properties and hanging out with ministers and actually going to nightbloods right so so he was one of the guys who was bringing in um cocaine from uh latin america to europe via the ports of rotterdam and antwer which are well notorious at the time for being

the major ports of entry for like so-called rip-on rip-off um cocaine shipments and so he then moves his operation to Sierra Leone. Why Sierra Leone? I assume there's weak governance, there are issues with security. You describe in the story how he was sort of very easily able to bribe his way to the very top of the country's political scene, right? The different reasons why the choice made a little of sense. So it's not, I was trying to, I spend a lot of time trying to establish the exact story of how he decided to come from Turkey to Sierra and when. It happened at some point. So we know he was older living in Sierra Leone in August 2002.

And it's not clear he might have come there already in 2021. It might have been earlier in 2022. Not sure for what reason or based on which connection, exactly. But the choice made a lot of sense. And so with Africa, as for decades, been used as, like, for decades, been used as, the transshipment hub for cocaine coming from Latin America to Europe. But this became even more prominent in recent years when Unverb and Rotterdam improved their security.

And also as a global cocaine market cruise, so I think it's doubled since 2014. So the veterans potentially increase. So in theory, why West Africa is a transhripment hub? is the fact that it's like a probability gain. So if you have a container coming from Sierra Leone, it's less likely to be scanned than a container coming from Colombia, for example. So doing this increases your returns.

And potentially, maybe if he went for an obvious country, like Guinea-Bissau or even Nigeria or Ghana or Ivory Coast, they would have already been known and established as cooking transcripts. but Sialian wasn't really known and wasn't very on the scene. Another thing is that, for example, in Guinea-Bissau, which is equally good in terms of weak law enforcement and welcoming international cooking criminals. You already have very established cooking gangs and cartels.

This wasn't the case in Sialione. The scene was very much up for grabs. So Lydikos was able to come, establish himself very quickly as a dominant player, and then gradually corrupt the entire political scene. and make way for his business. By the time Lydok has arrived in Sierra Leone then, it is already a pretty mouth-watering prospect for an on-the-run narco.

Over two decades after the end of Civil War, drug addiction is roaring back into vogue with Cush, which is a rough synthetic cannabinoid that is killing hundreds, if not thousands of locals, enough that in April 2024, President Julius Mada Beo will declare a national emergency, calling the drug a quote death trap. I think we got into this a bit with the Sam Walker episode.

Did you also do it on a show on this way back? Was that a thing? Or did you do Cush? Yeah, I think I did like a short on it, maybe for like the YouTube channel or Patreon, but I'm always skeptical of like the human bones stuff, you know? Yeah. Sounds like Junkum all over again, though.

You know what I mean? There are stuff like that does happen in sub-saharan Africa sometimes. But like the other question is, how much money actually is there to be made in retail sales to like street kids in Sierra Leone. Like I can't, I can't imagine there's that much. No,

the weird thing is that it's synthetic, right? Like if it was locally made, then maybe you could imagine a Sierra Leone making loads of money, but I don't know what this stuff is really. I don't think you can make that much money. Like, you know,

if you're selling, if you're selling the street kids, what are you selling for like a dollar? Oh, not even that. That would be like, yeah, like a 10 cents or something. So like how much, whatever the profit margin is,

it can't be that. I mean, maybe like for, For a local, yes. But for a narco, it doesn't seem, it seems pointless to get involved. No, agreed. I mean, there's also stories about authorities placing security at cemeteries to stop out, digging up skeletons for the bones to make this stuff. But I don't know, I'm skeptical, but that stuff does happen. Yeah, yeah, maybe. I don't know. If you know, let us know Underworld Podcasts at gmail.com. That would be a great. If you can get your hands on some Cush, Sean will do it on the Patreon. Yeah, why not? I've got nothing to lose.

But BEO's declaration in 2024 will prove to be hypocritical at best. Like Joseph said, we don't know exactly when Yos Lidica swaps Turkey for Sierra Leone. Is it Yos? Is it Josh? Josh? Is it Josh? Who knows? I think I'm going to go with Joss from now on. It would do.

Yeah, yeah, that would do. But staff at the Lagunda Casino in Freetown, which you heard about in the Cold Open, say that he started coming around the summer of 2022, which is just as a suburb. well because a year later Turkish authorities finally act on his network there they arrest 25 suspects including Lydica's brother Wilhelms yeah i'm going to get these all wrong Wilhelmus will hummus it's got to be villomis right i think that's Joe i think they pronounce it were in and i just like the idea of you mispronouncing stuff for once but also like it does seem like turkey now is kind of a destination for for organized criminals and

gangsters on the run for sure they do eventually crack down. But a lot of folks, a lot of, I mean, a lot of the Swedish gangsters were heading there, Swedish Moroccan or Swedish Kurdish gangsters heading there. We just talked about Turkey, I think, in the last episode, like, Turkey is definitely a destination for, for gangsters on the run now. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they do not extradite. So I think that's what makes it. They don't extirate Turkish citizens and they sell citizenship, I think, for golden citizenship. That's part of the, part of the hustle. Yeah, I mean, Freetown, however, free town Sierra Leone, it is no Istanbul.

It's not even a braider, right? It's situated on a series of hills, some of which are very well hidden from each other. Outside the city, there are a few paved streets and patchy electricity networks. The situation worsens between May and September each year, when heavy rains leave much of the small nation impossible to reach. However, writes Newlines, quote, Sierra Leone offered ideal conditions for Lidica's enterprise. The state's presence is weak and inconsistent. It is unable to provide basic services, including security and the rule of law.

Immigration and national security protocols are poorly and inconsistently applied. Anyone can move through the country as they wish, provided they are willing to hand out the occasional customary tip at police checkpoints. One police officer who attends to one of the busiest checkpoints in downtown Freetown, told new lines that her bosses would let anyone pass through, even those carrying drugs for less than $10. Remember how Lidikas had learned the art of corruption from his Surinamese power back in 2011? Well, now he puts all of it into action,

under the pseudonym of Omar Sharif, forming close partnerships with some of the most important people in Sierra Leone's political scene. Point man number one, Alison Kanner, then the National Parliament's deputy whipped, Do you have party whips in the States? I mean, these are the guys who ensure that MPs attend votes and vote in line with party policy,

literally whipping them into shape. We don't. And maybe that's why we have so many dang crooks over here. I think the whips are kind of like crook enablers. Anyway, Kanner has an interesting backstory. He'd become a refugee in Norway during the Civil War, returned home in 2012, and then struggled to break into politics. And in 2023, gets into a scandal when a Norway,

Norwegian charity is defrauded out of tens of thousands of dollars while trying to open a hospital in Sierra Leone. Cana then takes part in a scheme whereby a Norwegian farmer loses $1 million trying to open a gold mine. I mean, he's really running like the patented classic dumb Westerner hustle. Like, hustles on dumb Westerners right here, right? The gold mine and the, and the charity that's fake. Like, come on. It's a classic to the genre. Yeah, we don't offer a huge amount of advice.

on this show, but if we can, then one of them should be do not open a gold mine in West Africa if you are a Norwegian farmer. Cana seems to be Lidica's point man also of entry into free town's political elite. And their friendship just happens to blossom in coincidence with Canna buying three homes in Pennsylvania and Delaware in the US for just under $2 million. Why? I mean, two million for three homes too. I know the European mind might have trouble comprehending this, but $2 million for three homes in like Pennsylvania and Delaware are like three basically mid-range middle-class homes.

But like also why? Philadelphia, me? Delaware is where you do tax fraud, but like you don't need to live there. Can a man not just Airbnb a few houses out? That's true. Maybe he is getting into Airbnb game. Very good point. I'm completely, I take back what I said.

Airbnb hustle is a great one, you know. Delaware, we're ever sick, you know, that parts of Pennsylvania where you can, you can raft on it and there's good vibes. Man, Pennsylvania is an extremely weird state, huh? Like, West is basically redneck, hick, crazy town, and then Philadelphia. Odd.

Poconos, too. Yeah, beautiful place. Here is Joseph for more on all of this nutty stuff. This was only in the US for $1.9 million. dollars and he wasn't able to, so he wasn't able to explain, he wasn't able to explain where the money came from. So in his responses to the media, he said, I made it money for the Norwegian gold mining venture. But a couple of months before that, he told Norwegian media that he had nothing to do with his venture and he actually, he was a victim of it and he didn't make money

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on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavatheater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 20th. you want to enter and here's joseph's new line piece again quote a leaked video from canner's 50th birthday showed a joyful in quotes omar shirif gift him a gold rolex watch if you give a sierra

o man a hundred thousand dollars he'll go crazy said a local chauffeur familiar with lydica's movements during this time side note if you also give western podcasters a hundred thousand dollars they would also go crazy he came to the right place this guy adds you can buy anything in Freetown. Even after the New Year's 2023 shooting from the cold open, Lydikers doesn't lay low or leave Sierra Leone. I mean, why would he? By this point, just a few months after his arrival, he is ensconced in the country's politics so deeply

that his powers with President B.O. I didn't realize when I was writing this that his name is President B.O. I really, I don't know he doesn't smell. And locals know him not only as Omar Sharif, but as a jagaband, which is a local word meaning a wealthy and influential man or king, which is also, I think, what a lot of local women call Danny, even to this day in Sierra Leone. In August 2023, President B.O. reshuffles his government, appoints Kanner Chief of Immigration, and another close Leidica's associate, Andrew Kakai, as director of Sierra Leone's National Drug

Enforcement Agency. He also installs Yanguba B.O., who I'm pretty sure is a relation, as the head of the National Port Authority, who also, guess what, happens to be a close friend of Chubby Joss. By the way, nicely done back there before. That's some good retaliation. Yeah. You're getting to get him in while you can. Oh, I will. I will, my friend. It's not too surprisingly that around this same time, I mean, bear in mind, guys, like this guy now has the Chief of Immigration, the National Drug Enforcer, and the Chief of the National

Ports Authority. I think he's pretty well placed now. And it's not too surprisingly that cocaine seizures with connections to Sierra Leone saw. In November 2022, French naval officers intercept a Brazilian fishing vessel carrying 4.6 tons of product to Europe off the Sierra Leone coast. In April 2023, the Guinean Navy discovers 1.5 tons of cocaine on a Europe-bound boat flying, rather, a Sierra Leone flag. And that October, Antwerp port officials bust 10 tons of cocaine hidden in Sierra Leone soybean flour. And when they do, cartel gunmen attack customs officials in Antwerp. Like, this is crazy. This is the first time a shipment anywhere near that size has made it from Sierra Leone to Europe.

And it has to be the handiwork of Joss Leidikers. Allegedly. Yeah. Yeah, let's keep the lawyer. person check. Usually, this guy allegedly, will have a shipment dropped off at wharves around Freetown to be picked up by a small boat, which is a common tactic in cocaine trafficking the world around. But he'll also mastermind air shipments. In September 2024, a private jet with fake registration and its radar disabled lands at Freetown International Airport. This story's nuts. The crew consists

of four Mexicans and a literal flying Dutchman, and they refuse to show their documents. Officials claim they find nothing, let the group go after they pay a hundred thousand dollar fine. Nothing to see here, guys, whatsoever. Just four Mexicans and the Dutchman flying into Sierra Leone Airport for no reason whatsoever. It's around this time that Lydikas is seen around Freetown's most expensive restaurants and bars with Agnes B.O., the president's daughter, writes Africa Confidential quote, She is a particular favourite of her father's who has promoted her career in the Foreign Service.

After serving as an advisor in the foreign ministry, she is now accredited to Sierra Leone's permanent mission to the UN in New York. And as such, is immune from arrest or detention or having a bag searched on entry or exit from the United States. I mean, sometimes you really do just get lucky in love. In November 2024, Lydikas is feeling so secure wrapped in his Sierra Leone bubble that he flies into megastars of the Afrobeats genre for a massive party that is new fiancé. I mean, there's no word of what happened to his wife

and kids, by the way. Okay, but do we know which two Afro beats people it was? Oh, we do. I mean, you know, like, people do, but I don't. I mean, like, can you tell us? Uh, do you, do you want me to look at this? No, no, that's fine. You know what? We'll just keep it. Just, just keep it going. I mean, it's not Burnaboy, so unfortunately that's where my understanding goes. Anyway, folks post a bunch of videos of this party. Word gets out that Omar Sharif is actually Chubby Joss, who's still at large in Freetown after the 2023 shooting. But again, journalists looking into the story are threatened, press freedom is chilled,

he has got the entire country in his pocket. But the following month, a live stream captures footage of Lydikas at a Catholic ceremony, being held by President Bio. He's lost weight now, he looks like he's been hit in the gym, and has quite possibly also been under the plastic surgeon's knife. Reuters picks up the footage, and by January 2025, Dutch police confirm

this is the guy that they had recently sentenced to 24 years in absentia, for six drug trafficking shipments, totaling almost eight tons, the Finnish armed robbery, and a murder for hire. They will eventually confiscate 112, million dollars in assets, having sort of record quarter billion in the Dutch courts. This guy is like, he's really big time. He's not some obscure, like, drug king being in the middle of nowhere.

In fact, by this point, Lydikas is on Euro poll's most wanted list with a so-called red notice, which is when a worldwide request for a law enforcement to arrest an individual pending extradition goes out. This is a big deal. But surprisingly, given President B.O.'s commitment to find in drug crime, Sierra Leone doesn't cough up its most famous narco resident. Dutch authorities request that tradition in February 2025, but officials in Freetown delay and then they just ignore Dutch calls altogether.

The following month, last March, the footage of Leideke's giving Kanner a golden Rolex watch emerges and Bio actually sacks Kana as chief immigration minister. But Andrew Kakai, his other friend, remains Sierra Leone's top drug enforcer and Yacuba BEO is still in charge of the country's ports. I mean, to illustrate just how closely wound up with drugs CLEO's government has become, in January 2025, it recalls its ambassador to Guinea when seven suitcases containing cocaine are found in an embassy vehicle, plus a couple thousand dollars in cash. It's Guinea Bissal 2.0, and members of the press continue to be threatened, quote, many journalists have been silenced because the government doesn't want the story to

stay in the press, a newspaper editor says. Some what offers hushed money in exchange for their silence, others were subject to more falseful methods. My office was attacked in March this year by unknown people, another newspaper editor says. They were looking for me. They forced themselves into my office, scattered my belongings looking for something, and then they left. And that's pretty much where this story ends, incredibly. The Dutch are still after Lydikas and the Sierra Leoneans don't want to give him up. Tons of great links for this story on the reading list for Patreon members, not least Joseph's New Line articles, which he co-wrote last July with Oliver Dunn. What is the latest since then?

Well, here is Joseph. Lydicus is still there. The presidential family and the establishment have faced no consequences. I think the only person who's ever been fired was Scana and he lost his job as an immigration, as the chief immigration officer. I think this is already before we incorporated this into the story, but this was because the video was published of him receiving gifts from Lidekers for his 50th birthday. And Andrew Kikekai was also in that footage. But for example, Andrew Kajai, who was in that footage, is still the head of the truck enforcement agency.

And Julius Madabio, who is clearly involved in different ways in the meantime, became. the head of the president of of ECOWAS, the economic community of the Western African States and now is in case in a high level of diplomacy in the region. And Leidecker is still there, so he hasn't been seen in the public.

There are no videos or pictures proving that he is in Sierra Leone. But there are various reports of him fearing at different properties in Freetown accompanied by military personnel and sometimes, sometimes even appearing in restaurants or clubs. It's not a huge city, right, Freetown?

I mean, I can't imagine that you'd be able to necessarily hide there, could you? It's over a million people, and it's in the hills, so we've got a lot of distant corners. So, hypothetically, if you find a property in a more distant, glad neighborhood, and you don't go outside, you only use your car, I think it's possible. And then also, so it's quite a long peninsula. He had a lot of properties alongside the peninsula itself. So quite a lot of places. And he did get to buy a lot of properties,

and he did get to establish a lot of connections with businessman and local politicians. So the modus of Rander seems to be that he is just changing properties where he is staying all the time. So that is the tale of how one of Europe's most wanted men found a home and a drug-spersonable. smuggling haven in a small corner of West Africa. It is pretty crazy and we'll actually put the full interview with Joseph on the Patreon for subscribers. Thanks as always for listening. I am off for an empanada and a painfully slow and difficult conversation with my dormant.

That was that was awesome, dude. As always, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast, Spotify, iTunes, support us. Throw down. Keep Sean reporting on super obscure organized crime stories from all over the world. world.