AMSTERDAM — A new trial against former professional football player Quincy Promes will start in Amsterdam on Friday. The fallen professional footballer of Surinamese origin has already been sentenced in two cases to a total of 7.5 years in prison, but now the Public Prosecution Service wants to reclaim money through a so-called confiscation case that, according to the judiciary, was earned from cocaine smuggling.
Promes was previously convicted in two criminal cases. In February 2024, he was sentenced to six years in prison in absentia for involvement in international cocaine trafficking. Before that, he had already been sentenced to a year and a half in prison for stabbing his cousin during a family party in Abcoude, the Netherlands.
“On Friday, the justice department is expected to announce exactly how much money will be recovered from Promes
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At the time of those convictions, the former Ajax player and former Dutch national team had long since fled to Russia to avoid criminal prosecution. In Russia he signed a contract with Spartak Moscow and achieved success on the football field. He ended up on the Interpol list and was eventually arrested in Dubai in 2024, which extradited him to the Netherlands last year. He has been in prison in Amsterdam ever since.
The substantive hearing of the appeal in both cases, which have been combined, is scheduled at the Amsterdam Court of Appeal for the end of November. And now there is a confiscation case. The substantive case will not yet be dealt with on Friday, but the justice department is expected to announce exactly how much money will be recovered from Promes. He will not be present at the hearing.
Trauma from detention
At a first hearing in the appeal in the other cases, he still claimed to be innocent. However, in March he suddenly confessed to the stabbing incident. According to his lawyers, he did this because he suffered trauma from his detention in Dubai. Promes says he was treated harshly during his interrogation.
He was also confronted with the suspicion that he had links with the still fugitive drug criminal Jos Leijdekkers, better known as ‘Bolle Jos’. His name surfaced at the time in the investigations surrounding Promes, because the judiciary linked him to larger drug networks in which ringleaders such as Leijdekkers are active. However, according to Promes, he was wrongly ‘labeled as a criminal’ and he felt ‘a lot of anger and fear around the case’.
In March, Geert-Jan and Carry Knoops took over the defense of lawyer Cem Polat, who has been sidelined by Promes; The Knoops couple are expected at the start of the confiscation case on Friday.
