If you ask most normal young boys on the street what they want to be when they grew up, one of the most obvious answers you’ll get is professional athlete. It makes sense.
A life of professional sports is often seen as the most desirable route towards happiness and financial freedom. It’s also a route that is widely believed to prevent a life of crime.
But what happens when a player chooses both. Quincy Promes is what happens.
For some reason, Quincy Promes, an ACTIVE football player, who at the height of his playing career was earning millions decided that it wasn’t enough.
In early 2024, the Dutch Public Prosecutor’s office demanded that the former Dutch international serves a 9-year prison sentence.
What for? Well, for legal reasons and to stay in line with YouTube’s content policies, for the purposes of this video, you can think of Quincy Promes as a young, up and coming baker. One that loves the art of baking so much that he’s turned to selling baking powder. Under the counter baking powder
He’s trafficked over 1300 kgs of baking powder into Europe.
I don’t think many people really understand how crazy that is. Using pretty simple math from google on street values of baking powder, we’re talking almost a hundred million euros worth of this stuff. You easily get multiple life sentences moving this kind of weight elsewhere in the world.
We’ll go into more details on it all in the video, but I wanted to open with that, so we know that we’re not dealing with a simple case of possession- we’re dealing with a very large network of… bakers.
And this isn’t even the only criminal charge laid against him. As we speak, he is in the appeal process going against a charge that he allegedly tried to fatally stab a cousin in 2020.
There’s even video evidence of him allegedly trying to bribe Russian police officers dating back to September of 2023.
The crazy thing about all of this is that, he’s a free man. More than that. He’s still playing, he’s still vibing out with his friends, he’s not facing justice anytime soon.
He was even voted as the best player in the Russian Premier League by the fans in the 2022/23 football season- that’s right, a vote that happened only 7 months ago. All of this information was public back then.
To be fair, he pretty much had the best year of his career on the pitch last season, so we can’t fault him there. As you can see, this is a very crazy story.
Quick note that this video involves criminal activity. Everything sensitive has been censored and all of the sources, court documents I could find, and everything in between is linked in text on my website, as it also has been with every video on this channel.
Cool. Just so we’re all on the same page, let’s kick this one off from the very beginning.
Table of Contents
Upbringing
Born in Amsterdam in 1992, Quincy Promes grew up in poor living conditions. His family were immigrants of Suriname descent. His father was a pro footballer in Suriname before immigration, but went amateur after making the move.
Football was always going to be a large part of his life and by the time he was 10, he was in the Ajax academy and loving life. But he was always a bit of a mischievous youngster. Talking back to coaches, going out late at night, not respecting his fellow academy students.
“I was not an easy boy in the past. I liked mischief and didn’t keep my mouth shut. I was greedy on the field, I had no doubt that I played football better than others in the whole world.”
Looking back at this moment in time in 2016, Promes had this to say. And he was very very good. He was, of course, in the Ajax youth academy. That’s no easy feat.
But it was ultimately his bad behaviour and attitude that got him into deep trouble there. Shortly after turning 16, he was kicked out of the academy.
Amongst all the factors I’ve just mentioned, it’s also believed that he was kicked out partly due to the company he kept outside of football. Which, knowing what we know now, probably makes sense.
Anyway, this was a massive emotional blow and based on all of his interviews after this, it seems like he understands that he was at fault here.
Nonetheless, I’m sure that this did not help him in the moment. He was very close to quitting football altogether at the time, but was convinced by his mother that this was not the best decision for him.
This was in 2008. Fast forward 3 years later to 2011 and after going through Haarlem and then Twente, he was officially a professional footballer.
As an attacker, more specifically a right winger, he had everything that you need to succeed. The pace, power and confidence. But he was still quite raw, as expected from a 20 year old. To sharpen himself up, he accepted a loan move to Go Ahead Eagles in the second Division of Dutch Football.
And in almost no time, he was a fan favourite. Promessi is what they called him. It’s what happens when you score 17 goals and make 11 assists in 42 appearances, I guess.
Unsurprisingly, upon his return to Twente at the start of the 2012/13 season, it was expected that he would become an important player. And, of course, he did.
He hit the ground running with such force that he had 8 goals and 5 assists in his first 15 games of the season, injured his knee in November, yet was still widely considered to be the best player for the first half of the season.
There were so many clubs after him at this point that he really had his pick. Juventus, Valencia and many more had their eyes on him. But it was Russia that appealed to him more. Spartak Moscow.
As it turns out, this was the best decision of his career. And if we fast forward to 2024, this was probably one of the best decisions of his life.
Star
Promes’ moved over in a €15 Million deal and immediately proved himself to be worth the money. The next 4 years consisted of him breaking record after record as he won multiple player of the year awards, player of the month awards, team of the year awards and much much more.
All of this culminated in Spartak Moscow winning the league in 2017, with Promes being named as the best footballer player of the year too. This was the first time that the team had won the league since 2001.
These are his stats for 2017, with a reminder that only 30 games are played in an RPL season. They’re magnificent.
Despite all of this, he refused to leave right there and then, staying on for another season, achieving even better numbers. I hope you all realise what all of this means. Even all the way back in 2017, he was a club legend.
A player that this team will absolutely never forget and a player that fans of the clubs and upper management will likely always protect. Keep that in mind.
He had accomplished his goal of raising his profile and in 2018, he was overdue for testing himself in the bigger leagues. He was still on 26 years old at the time. First was Sevilla.
Things did not work out. And nobody can say it was due to a lack of faith in him or anything like that. He signed for 20 million euros- still to this day the record sale for Spartak Moscow. He played in 49 games in the 2018/19 season alone.
After signing a 5-year contract with the Spanish club, he only managed to score 3 times, with 9 assists in total. He didn’t exactly perform as expected. After one year, he was moved along once again.
But the next move had all the signs of being successful one in the long run. It was a move back to his boyhood club, Ajax. And his first season back wasn’t all that bad. In fact, he probably wouldv’e walked away from the season with an Eredivisie title had the global illness not got in the way.
His second season wasn’t all that great, though. He only lasted about half a year there before his time was up.
Having exhausted all of his options and failing to succeed outside of Russia, he made his return to Spartak Moscow in 2021, at 29 years of age.
This is just about where all the bad stuffy began to come to light.
Criminal
On an international level, Quincy Promes hasn’t had the most glittering careers for Oranje. But he also hasn’t had the worst. Not by a longshot. He made 50 appearances for the Dutch national team, even scoring in a nation’s league semi-final in 2019.
However, since 2021, he has yet to feature for the national side. And according to sources close to those involved with the national team, even if he still has a shot from 2024 and beyond, this will remain the case until he clears his name.
This is because in November 2021, Dutch courts ruled that Promes should be prosecuted for stabbing a relative at a party. The charges? Attempted murder.
Stabbing
Apparently, this happened at a family party in late December 2020- only 2 months before he moved back to Russia. The victim was one of his cousins.
His trial date, initially scheduled for late March 2022, was postponed for about year because a key witness had fallen ill on the day of the trial. In the meantime, his assets in the Netherlands were all frozen. Which to this day does not matter, as he was and still is in Russia.
This is the exact reason why he remains as a football player. He denies that he played any part in this incident and has pleaded his innocence through his lawyers.
Despite this, when the new date of his criminal trial was set to early March 2023, he did not show up. Because they could not force him to show up.
The Netherlands and Russia do not have an extradition treaty with one another. So when he was ultimately found guilty in 2023 and sentenced to 18 months in prison on a downgraded aggravated assault charge, nothing happened.
Interestingly, at one point the trial was put on pause to investigate the validity of a key piece of evidence.
Promes and many of those close to him had had their phones tapped by authorities at some point over the years. And in one of the conversations that was intercepted by the investigators, he allegedly admitted to being involved in the stabbing.
Here’s the thing, though- his phone was being tapped for a completely different reason in a completely different investigation.
Baking powder
In early 2020, two large shipments of baking powder were scheduled to be shipped to a port in Antwerp, Belgium. One containing 650kg of powder and another with 712 kgs.
The 712 kg load was seized, the 650 kg load has never been found.
A man by the name of Marylio V, who is suspected to be one of Promes’ main accomplices and happens to be his uncle, has admitted to playing a small role in this deal, but refuses to admit that Promes had any role in the operation.
Which is understandable.
Marylio V has an extensive criminal record. As recently as 2019, he was sentenced to 4 years in prison in Belgium after importing close to 900kgs of baking powder.
His alleged role, likely was not small.
If the court reports are true, Promes has likely been under investigation since as early as 2018, following anonymous tip offs in the same year.
All of this led to at least one of his shipments being seized and the entire operation being blown up. Or at least some of those involved being caught- we can’t be naïve and think that the day has been saved overall.
At some point all of his lines of communication were tapped and this is where the audio of him allegedly admitting to stabbing his cousin. Again, I don’t think I can say the full reported quote that was leaked from this conversation, because it’s pretty graphic, but it went along the lines of:
“I did not intend to hit him in the knee. Next time, I will not miss”.
All of this brings to light how shady the dealings of some professional athletes can be. The fact that many footballers come from underprivileged backgrounds means that a whole lot of them have been exposed to shady activity in their lives. Like any normal human, many of them shy away from going deeper or are saved by someone or something before they go too deep.
But I’m more than certain that some go down both roads.
The court proceedings have revealed several details that show that all of this is really just the tip of the iceberg. It’s primetime TV stuff, really.
There’s mention of the fact that Promes invested over €200,000 of his own money into botched shipment.
It mentions that Promes had to pay a substantial fee to another well-known trafficker after a completely separate shipment was stolen by a rival gang.
This other well-known trafficker is alleged to have been behind the assassination of a former Dutch footballer, Kalvin Maynard, who was shot at point blank in 2019.
Deep water
Back to Promes, this man was moving some very serious weight. And like I’ve said before- you don’t go from 0 to moving 1300kgs, right?
There has to be some in between, maybe this is the inbetween. If he was suspected since as early as 2018, you have to imagine there’s much much more to this.
Reports indicate that Quincy Promes has been in the process of securing a Russian Passport, which will ultimately give him a strong veil of security. In a weird way, he’s helped quite a bit by the fact that Russian teams have been banned from European competitions amidst the war.
He’s very much aligned himself with Russian Culture in a lot of ways. Some might believe that he’s “stuck” in Russia. But this probably couldn’t be further from the truth. Would you call a man that recently became the top international scorer of all time in the Russian League “stuck”?
He’s just come off the best season of his entire life, plus for some reason, he’s still being allowed visa’s to travel to the UAE.
Whatever is actually going on, I highly doubt the people around him seem to care all too much either. And yes, that includes football players.
This is a picture from Memphis Depay’s Instagram, taken on the 31st of December 2023. It included snapshots of Paul Pogba too. These guys are all still mates and Quincy Promess is still living the dream.
He’s a rapper, you can watch his music videos right here on YouTube. He’s a cofounder of several businesses.
He’s chilling.
Something you might be asking yourself is what does Spartak Moscow think about all of this? Surely they have some… thoughts on their club legend being wanted in his home country for several charges of… bakery, violent conduct and more?
Nope, they don’t. Almost every time that something new has hit the news relating to Quincy Promes and his activities outside of football, the club has responded with similar statements. One of “a final verdict is yet to be made” or something similar.
Ironically, Russia has a very low tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol and driving under the influence. Apparently some of Promes’ friends were detained in mid 2022 for doing all three.
A video of him allegedly attempting to bribe a police officer at a Russian police station went viral last year. Note that no bribes were paid and his friends were released.
Spartak’s response: “He’s done nothing illegal”.
Tells you all you need to know.
Is all of this true? Will Quincy Promes ever return to the Netherlands? Who’s involved? How many of them have ties to the European football industry? How deep does this all go? A lot questions, very few answers.
All I know is that I doubt we’ve heard even close to the end of any of this.