Jonas Falk was sentenced in October last year to four years and ten months in prison for his involvement in the blackmail of financier Joachim Kuylenstierna.
On Wednesday, he will be charged again – he is suspected of four particularly serious drug offenses in a case that, according to the prosecutor, involves 2.5 tons of cocaine.
Bank robberies and acquittals
Jonas Falk, born Jonas Oredsson, now 53, received his first prison sentence at the age of 17. Since then, he has repeatedly faced the courts.
Aftonbladet, among others, has previously reported that Jonas Falk was one of Sweden’s most talked-about criminals in the 1990s after a series of bank robberies and several spectacular acquittals.
He eventually ended up in Colombia, where he was arrested again in 2010, suspected of being one of the ringleaders of a worldwide cocaine ring.
Convicted of money laundering
The affair became known as “Operation Playa” and earned Falk the nickname “the Playa Swede.” He has also been called “the Swedish Pablo Escobar” because of the allegations.
The decisive moment came when French authorities raided a boat in the Caribbean in the summer of 2010. 1.4 tons of cocaine were found on board. The captain, the so-called “lone sailor”, was later sentenced to 14 years in prison. However, Jonas Falk, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in the district court, was ultimately acquitted and received a total of 3.6 million kronor in compensation from the state.
However, his time in freedom was short – he was arrested almost immediately and then extradited to Spain, where, after a lengthy legal process, he was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and fined the equivalent of SEK 50 million for drug-related money laundering in 2021. In October 2024, he was extradited from Spain and has since been detained in Sweden.
