Footballer Quincy Promes invested in a cocaine smuggling operation that netted a Surinamese-Dutch drugs baron €6 million, a court has been told.

Promes, 31, and another man, Marylio V., also 31, went on trial in Amsterdam on Monday accused of importing more than 1300kg of the drug to the Dutch capital via Antwerp.

Police said they had intercepted phone calls and encrypted text messages which showed that Promes was involved in transporting the drugs, which were hidden among a consignment of salt on board the Cap San Nicolas in January 2020.

Promes arranged for runners to take the blocks of cocaine, which were marked with a black tiger logo, off the ship and set up a rendez-vous with V. at a shisha lounge in Antwerp.

Belgian police intercepted one of the shipments, prompting Promes to send the message: “Shit, man. So the other half is safe. Risk of the job.”

Prosecutors said the shipment was part of a smuggling operation that police were monitoring under the codename Porto, which was headed by the Surinamese-Dutch gangland boss Siegfried “Piet” Wortel.

The justice department said in January that it believed Promes had had to pay a €250,000 fine to Wortel as compensation for a 400kg haul of drugs that was stolen by a rival gang.

Promes, who moved from Ajax to Spartak Moscow in 2020, was not in court for the hearing, having chosen to stay in Russia. It is unlikely he will be extradited.

He is also accused in a separate case of stabbing his nephew at a family party in Abcoude in July 2020, in an argument over a stolen necklace.

Police charged him in connection with the incident on the basis of intercepted conversations that were recorded by police investigating his role in the drugs shipments.

Promes’s lawyer, Robert Malewicz, has argued that the evidence gathered during the drugs investigation should not be used in an unrelated case.

The prosecution service has asked the court to impose a two-year jail sentence for serious assault, after dropping an earlier charge of attempted murder.