Prosecutors last year said the former international was suspected of having been involved with smuggling 1,360 kg of cocaine through the port of Antwerp, Belgium, to the Netherlands in two shipments in 2020.
Promes did not attend the court hearing in Amsterdam. His lawyers told Dutch news agency ANP he denies the charges of importing, exporting, transporting and possessing the drugs.
The cocaine had been hidden in shipments of salt from Brazil, the prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Phone taps had shown that Promes had been directly involved with the shipment of the drugs to Antwerp and their further transport and sale, they said.
In another Dutch court case, the former Ajax and Sevilla forward last year was sentenced in absentia to 18 months in jail for assault, in connection with a fight in 2020 in which he stabbed a cousin in the knee.
Promes has filed an appeal against that sentence.
He is currently living in Moscow and it is not certain he will return to the Netherlands.
