Johannes van Damme

Johannes van Damme (1 June 1935 – 23 September 1994) was a Dutch engineer and businessman executed in Singapore for drug trafficking.

He was the first European to be executed in Singapore since its independence.

After graduating from the HTS Vlissingen in 1959, van Damme first worked as a technical engineer at the Kóni shock absorbers factory in Oud-Beijerland, then opened his own company in Hengelo manufacturing bicycle parts in the mid 1960s.

After his firm went out of business in 1976, van Damme began travelling to Nigeria on a regular basis to work as an agent for a local Dutch engineering firm.

In the early 1980s, van Damme moved permanently to Nigeria and was married to a local woman at the time of his arrest in Singapore.

In 1990, van Damme was arrested in Haarlem for the possession of 10 kg of cannabis.

In the early 1990s, the US Drug Enforcement Administration set up the Kodiac car brokerage firm in Baltimore, Maryland, as a front company.

As well as selling cars, the undercover DEA agents running the firm helped to transfer large amounts of money to foreign banks on behalf of local drug traffickers.

The information gathered during these operations would then be used to help arrest drug offenders and used as evidence during their prosecution in court.

In October 1990, DEA agent Wilbert Lee Plummer (who was the undercover agent in charge of Kodiac) was introduced to a Washington D.C. based Nigerian national named Chidi Leon Eboh, who ran a drug smuggling network between Thailand and the United States of America.

The syndicate would typically recruit African American couriers to travel to Singapore (although the gang was also active in Seoul and Manila) and await another drug mule to arrive from Bangkok with a shipment of heroin sourced from the Golden Triangle region.

For internal security reasons, the two couriers never met each other and local based members of the organization controlled the actual hand over of the drugs in Singapore.

After receiving the narcotics, the American courier would then travel on to Europe, and would be paid on average US$10,000 for smuggling 5 kilograms of heroin.

Ironically, Singapore was a favored transit point due to its strict anti-drug laws, as the traffickers believed airport customs officers would be less vigilant in checking passengers arriving from the city state.

According to DEA estimates at the time, one kilogram of heroin could be sold in America for a wholesale price of US$170,000 and would be worth over US$1 million by the time it was distributed at street dealing level.

On 14 February 1991, he was sentenced in absentia to ten weeks in jail; however, he did not serve any time in prison as he was in Nigeria when the judgement was handed down.

In March 1991, DEA agent Plummer transferred US$80,000 to a bank account in Bangkok for a 5 per cent commission fee on behalf of Leon, and would transfer cash on two further occasions to Bangkok based bank accounts in the course of his investigations.

DEA agent Plummer also purchased 100 grams of heroin from Leon for US$18,000 to build confidence with and embed himself further within the drug trafficking organization.

On 13 August 1991, Leon asked DEA agent Plummer to send US$22,000 to a Singapore-based Nigerian national named John Obiefuna, on the understanding the money was to be used to fund the purchase of heroin from Thailand.

DEA agent Plummer informed Singapore-based DEA agent Harry Fullett about the transaction, who then alerted the Central Narcotics Bureau.

Discovering Obiefuna was staying at the Westin Stamford Hotel on Stamford Road, the CNB bugged his hotel room and put him under 24-hour surveillance.

On 22 August 1991, DEA agent Plummer wired the US$22,000 to Obiefuna's bank account as requested, and Obiefuna then moved out of the hotel to a rented apartment on Oxley Road.

Obiefuna, who was on a 30-day social visit pass, subsequently registered a company whose nature of business was the import and export of children's clothing, and then applied for an employment pass to enable him to extend his stay in Singapore for up to two years.

On the night of 20 September 1991, undercover CNB agents observed Obiefuna appearing on the balcony of his apartment several times, as if he was expecting someone to arrive.

Soon after, the agents spotted a European man emerge from a taxi on the same road.

Obiefuna exited his apartment and walked down the street, and appeared to bump into the man.

They talked for a short time, and then the European walked away to return to the nearby Lloyd's Inn hotel where he was staying.

Subsequent investigations by the CNB agents identified the man as Dutch national Johannes van Damme.

Obiefuna and van Damme next met at a coffee shop, where undercover agents were waiting for them to arrive.

A pair of agents disguised as American tourists sat beside the two men and started to record their surroundings on a video camera, thus capturing Obiefuna and van Damme speaking to each other on tape.

One of the "tourists" then asked the pair if they could keep an eye on his bag for a few minutes while he and his friend recorded some footage of the street outside.

Unknown to Obiefuna and van Damme, inside the bag was a hidden microphone and tape recorder, which captured their ensuing private conversation where they discussed the details of their plan to have van Damme travel first to Thailand then onwards to Europe for a payment of US$20,000.

Van Damme subsequently booked a short package holiday in Phuket, and on arrival took a separate flight to Bangkok to collect a suitcase from Obiefuna's contacts.

After receiving it, van Damme returned to Phuket on the same day and awaited his return flight to Singapore a few days later.

Van Damme was arrested on the afternoon of 27 September 1991 in the transit lounge of Singapore Changi Airport, after arriving from Phuket, Thailand and awaiting a connecting flight to Athens in the evening.

Alerted by a police sniffer dog, narcotics officers had found 5.79 kg of heroin in a secret compartment of a suitcase belonging to him in the baggage area.

On 12 October 1991, 38 year-old Nigerian engineer John Obiefuna was arrested at his Oxley Garden apartment in connection with the heroin van Damme was caught with.

He was later charged with abetting van Damme in importing the heroin and was scheduled to face joint trial with him.

On 8 April 1993 in the High Court of Singapore, the opening statement of Deputy Public Prosecutor Ismail Hamid described how officers, acting on information received, had kept van Damme under surveillance after he arrived from Thailand that afternoon.

He was followed from the airport's interline transfer counter to the transit lounge area, where he was then intercepted outside a toy shop.