Cocaine highway: How JKIA has been exposed as transit for global drugs trade

From a general outlook, nothing betrayed the quiet of Tuesday night, May 13, at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

By all standards, it looked an ordinary evening, with families embracing at the departure halls, trolleys humming across polished floors, crowds moving with usual ease as vehicles snaked in and out of the terminals. It looked every bit the perfect, uneventful night at East Africa’s busiest gateway.

But it was not.

Strategic airport cameras captured what the human eye could not or perhaps chose not to see.

Unknown to scores of travellers at the facility, quietly behind the scenes something was cooking, one that would soon thrust Nairobi into the heart of an international drug scandal.

A foreign national walked into Kenya’s supposedly highly guarded international airport carrying a briefcase packed with class A and B drugs that included cocaine worth millions of shillings.

With surprising ease, he slipped through departures, carefully shepherded past security checks by airport officials and within no time, he was airborne, bound for London aboard a British Airways flight to Heathrow.

But the smooth run would end on arrival when the hawk-eyed Metropolitan Police Service pounced and in an instant, the man was promptly arrested.

The Standard’s investigations unit has obtained rare footage of how the operation was meticulously conducted, laying bare the mechanics of a trade many only whisper about, showing how one of Africa’s proudest airports has become a vulnerable crossroads in the global narcotics economy, aided by corrupt officials and compromised systems that give traffickers a free pass.

The CCTV footage unravels a rare sequence that investigators now describe as a classic handoff used to move narcotics on international flights.

And this is how it went down.

At 9:29 pm a man emerges from one end of the terminal. He is easy to notice, he has dreadlocks tucked under a beige cowboy hat, dressed in all black, pulling a suitcase with one hand while clutching a laptop in the other. On his shoulders hangs a black backpack. Beside him is a bald man calm and seemingly composed escorting him every step straight toward the check-in counters.

The 28-year-old has been identified by investigators as Da Mata Dos Santos. He was traveling on a British passport but believed to be of Brazilian origin aboard flight BA064. What would unfold over the next hour at JKIA before departure can be described as a textbook case of how narcotics slip quietly through international airports under the nose of officials.

The flight left Nairobi at exactly 2310 hours from Terminal 1A and arrived at Heathrow at 0622 hours at Terminal 5.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed to The Standard the arrest of Dos Santos noting that he appeared before Isleworth Crown Court on June 16, where he was remanded in custody pending trial on December 3, 2025.

In sharp contrast, their counterparts in Kenya the National Police Service and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, did not respond to our inquiries on the status of the investigation. 

Travel documents seen by The Standard show that Dos Santos had arrived in Nairobi on May 6 aboard a KQ flight, reason for travel recorded as holiday/tourism. He stayed in the country, at least according to the documents, for exactly one week until he made the trip back to London that sealed his fate.

“It is appalling that corruption, the greatest threat to our national security, is once again rearing its ugly head in the very places where vigilance should be highest. A foreign national casually bypassing security checks to smuggle drugs is the worst possible scenario for this country, and it should worry everyone,” observes Chris Otieno, a security analyst familiar with aviation security who reviewed the video.

Just how could Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, East Africa’s busiest aviation hub, manned around the clock by police units, detectives from anti-narcotics teams, customs officers, and even hosting a magistrate’s court within its precincts quietly become an invisible highway and stopover for the global narcotics trade?

JKIA is Africa’s fourth-busiest airport, handling millions of passengers annually and offering direct connections to major cities such as London, New York, Amsterdam, Dubai, Mumbai, and Guangzhou.

“In some countries, you cannot sneak in drugs and get away with it. These cartels do their homework, they study the system and identify the weaknesses they can exploit,” explains George Musamali, a Nairobi-based security expert.

“Nairobi, unfortunately, offers the perfect blind spot: Massive passenger and cargo flows, multiple international connections, and a ready supply of cheap mules to ferry drugs to their final destinations. That combination is every trafficker’s dream,” Musamali adds.

The CCTV video captures Dos Santos acting uneasy at first, and when he queues up with other travellers, he is visibly seen shifting his clothes here and there as he shuffles in line.

The bald handler, who seems like a plainclothes officer attached to the airport, is seen making calls, lingering near him, making sure nothing stalls the process. Moments later, as the queue inches closer to the scanner, the handler is seen speaking to a uniformed police officer and next Dos Santos is seen gently nudging his suitcase away from the scanner’s direct path.

At 9:31, he is seen handing his passport to an official for scrutiny and, at that moment, a man with a blue badge walks past the airport official with a Unit Load Device (ULD) a metal-framed container that looks like a stretcher, about one meter long, used to hold passenger baggage in the belly of the aircraft during international flights. But as we are learning, it could have other uses.

A source familiar with aviation travel intrigues has told The Standard that sometimes the ULD can be used by rogue individuals to conceal illicit packages especially when corrupt and crafty officials are involved to conveniently look away, exactly what seems to happen in the video.

Apparently, The Standard has learnt that this was not the first trip Dos Santos, 28, was making to and from Nairobi.

On September 2 last year, Dos Santos travelled again using his British passport, arriving in Nairobi on a KQ flight with the reason for travel captured as holiday/tourism.

Four days later, he booked a flight back to London, reason for travel captured as returning home.

But just how many more similar consignments have slipped through the gates of JKIA unchecked, finding their way to Europe, Asia, and beyond under the cover of a system supposedly airtight?

For a facility marketed as a fortress of security and adhering to international aviation standards where every suitcase is meant to be scanned and every passenger vetted, how do drug couriers manage to outwit the supposed watertight layers of surveillance and oversight?

“The human element has always been the problem. Behind every breach in security, there is a human hand. You may have the best technology, but the human factor remains the greatest obstacle to total security, and this case illustrates it in black and white,” says Musamali.

This is not an isolated incident, as over the years JKIA has been at the heart of several high-profile drug seizures.

Currently, JKIA’s Formation Criminal Investigations Office is led by Bridget Kanyai, while the Anti-Narcotics Unit is under Suleiman Nahid. Both are reportedly aware of the incident but no action has been taken against officers implicated, according to our independent investigations.

Our investigations also led us to a revelation that there is a senior detective attached to the Mines Department who enjoys full access to all areas at the airport against existing airport security regulations.

In its response to our inquiries, the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) acknowledged the incident, noting that the case was under active investigation, adding that they would cooperate with investigators.

“We are unable to provide specific details at this stage so as not to prejudice ongoing investigations,” KAA said in their letter.

Statistics show that global cocaine production and consumption surged to record highs in 2023.

Data by The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime show that illicit cocaine output jumped to 3,708 tons nearly 34 per cent more than in 2022 while global seizures climbed to 2,275 tons, representing a 68 per cent rise over just four years.

Analysts estimate there are now about 25 million cocaine users globally, up from 17 million a decade ago.

In Kenya, a recent survey by the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse indicated that 1 in 63 university students reported having used cocaine.

“Sadly, for cartels, Nairobi is both a disguise and a launchpad: a place where narcotics consignments can be repackaged, rerouted, and slipped into legitimate air traffic, we are actually listed as a trafficking route,” says Musamali.

Kenya’s location at the intersection of African, Asian, and European air routes makes it nearly impossible to ignore for global cartels.