Jonas Falk, ‘the Swedish Pablo Escobar’, one of the most wanted drug traffickers in Europe, arrested in Spain

In his country of origin he was always called Billy the Kidbut the nickname that has been accompanying Jonas Sture Falk It is the one that the Colombian authorities gave him: The Swedish Pablo Escobar. The comparison, coming from where it comes, is not trivial. Everyone knew who he was and what he did, he liked to brag about his influence and he operated as one of the “drug banks” in Europe, but he never touched the merchandise. He never got his hands dirty.

Falk was the reference for drug traffickers to organize their unloading operations. The criminals contacted him, asked him for help to finance cocaine shipments, paid him interest and if I have seen you I don’t remember.

Compared to other drug lords, the Swede doesn’t play in another league, I played a completely different sport. Despite everything, and after fifteen years of persecution, the only way to catch him was to wait for an oversight, perhaps the only one in several decades of activity.

The Drug and Organized Crime Unit (UDYCO) of the National Police searched his house in Barcelona and found a series of photographs, papers and accounting diaries that allowed him to be linked to the transport of three tons of cocaine on the coast of Huelva. Despite everything, incriminating him is always complicated.

He was arrested in 2019 and was released; In 2021 he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for laundering money related to drug trafficking, but before serving a year and a half he was found on vacation in a five-star hotel in Ibiza. There they caught him again this Thursday.

His arrest has been an operation orchestrated by Europol, coordinator of an international group that includes UDYCO, Greco Galicia de Narcotics, the Swedish Police, the French OFAST and the Dutch Police. Next to him the dome of the Mocro Mafia in Southwestern Europe, one of the most active drug trafficking organizations on the continent, among which were Falk himself and the Moroccan Fikri Amellahwho was reported in prison —where is it due to other facts— about his new crimes. The operation also served to link all the legs of the largest transoceanic cocaine trafficking network on sailboats and other similar vessels.

Escobar’s disciples

On Thursday at noon, Jonas Falk was on the terrace of a luxury hotel in Sant Antoni, a parish on the island of Ibiza. According to images shared by the National Police, a group of armed agents entered the premises and arrested the drug trafficker after knocking him face down to the ground.

They came to him due to carelessness. They did not expect that Falk would be involved in the plot, in which other drug traffickers with no apparent relationship with the Swede were involved. Police followed the group to a clandestine meeting in Barcelona, ​​where they discussed and planned a new transport operation. There they found papers and documents with his name, a 7.65 caliber handgun with the serial number erased, money, notes, telephone terminals and computer devices.

The investigation, explain sources close to the case, was focused on Julio Andrés Murillo Figueroaa Colombian drug trafficker who worked for Pablo Escobar and who would continue to run the cocaine business in Medellín. The boss had been importing for fifteen years “huge quantities of cocaine” from Colombia to introduce it to Europe through Spain and Falk, in this case, was his trusted man for economic movements and export contacts. Through the Colombian’s papers, the structure of the organization, which operated in Spain, France and Colombia, could be uncovered.

Thanks to the evidence collected, the researchers discovered that the network was transporting more than three tons of cocaine directly from Venezuela to Spain. The final destination, the same sources say, was the coast of Huelva, where two drug traffickers were waiting for the shipment to distribute it throughout Europe.

However, upon arriving in Spain and with the drugs on the ground, a police intervention seized 1,632 kilos of cocaine out of the 3,228 that they had hidden in a “cove” of a garage. The agents, in this first phase of the operation, arrested two of those investigated and then focused their attention on other objectives. One of those investigated unexpectedly turned out to be Jonas Falk, one of the most active criminals, according to Swedish authorities.