Almost 22 years ago the most international drug trafficker, Pablo Escobar, died from a shot to the heart after being cornered by the armed forces. The son of a humble farmer from Colombia, at the age of 35 he had already become one of the richest men in the world. Escobar was at the head of the Medellín cartel, a criminal organization that moved 80 percent of the cocaine market worldwide. Thanks to this, the ‘king of cocaine’ managed to sneak into the list of ‘Forbes’ richest men on several occasions, a fact that remains latent in these ten data published by the ‘Business Insider’ portal.
10 facts
- In the mid-1980s, Escobar was earning about $420 million a week, which is equivalent to nearly $22 billion a year.
- “The boss” was among the richest of Forbes for seven years, from 1987 to 1993. In 1989, he was chosen the seventh richest man in the world.
- At the end of the 1980s, Pablo Escobar was in charge of supplying 80 percent of the world’s cocaine.
- He transported about 15 tons of cocaine to the United States daily. According to journalist Ioan Grillo, the Medellin cartel was responsible for most of the cocaine on the Florida coast.
- In other words, four out of every five lines of cocaine consumed in the US were supplied by Escobar.
- His money was spoiled. Escobar lost about 2,100 million dollars a month, something that was insignificant, according to ‘Business Insider’. However, Pablo Escobar’s wealth began to be a problem when he couldn’t launder money fast enough. So he resorted to hiding the bills in Colombian agricultural fields, dilapidated warehouses, and in the walls of the houses of some cartel members, according to the book by the capo’s brother and cartel chief accountant, Roberto Escobar, titled ‘The Story of the Accountant : inside the violent world of the Medellin cartel’. “Pablo earned so much money that every year we lost about 10 percent because rats ate it, it was damaged by humidity or it was lost,” he says.
- He spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands to organize and store bills, which was no easy task.
- On one occasion, Escobar built a fire using two million dollars in bills just because his daughter was cold. In 2009, Pablo Esobar’s son, Sebastián Marroquín, in an interview with “Don Juan magazine” described what his life was like with the “King of Cocaine.” According to Marroquín, they spent time living on the side of a mountain in Medellín and his sister, Manuela, became hypothermic. To warm him up, Escobar decided to set fire to a few bills totaling two million dollars.
- He was nicknamed “Robin Hood” after giving money to the poor and building them a home, 70 soccer fields and even a zoo.
- He reached an agreement to be imprisoned in Colombia, but in a luxury prison that he built himself and which he called “The Cathedral”. In addition, the drug trafficker established his own rules, such as that the authorities could not approach more than 4 kilometers from his cell.
How much money did Pablo Escobar have at the time of his death?
The leader of the Medellín Cartel died on December 2, 1993 during an operation orchestrated by the Colombian armed forces. The fortune of drug trafficker Pablo Escobar was estimated between 9,000 million and 15,000 million dollars, it has even been said that at the height of drug trafficking he amassed up to 25,000 million.
The former Medellín Cartel hit man known as “Popeye” pointed out that, in the final stretch of his life, Pablo Escobar only had no more than 20 million in cash left. According to Popeye, “El Patron” spent more than 500 million in the “war”.
The former member of the Colombian cartel said that the maximum amount of cash he saw in the hands of Pablo Escobar was 60 million during a trip to Miami. In addition, he explained that on some occasion he saw that the drug trafficker had another 30 million in bills in Colombia. However, that was only part of his fortune, since Escobar had money invested in properties, works of art, diamonds and gold.
