Pablo Escobar is thought to have been one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. The US government says that Pablo Escobar has more than $4 billion in US and Mexican currency stashed in different parts of Colombia. After Pablo Escobar died, the US government took most of his money and property, and his children got what was left.
What Was Pablo Escobar Net Worth?
Pablo Escobar was a drug lord born in Colombia with a peak net worth of $30 billion dollars. When he was alive, Pablo Escobar was in charge of the Medellin Drug Cartel, one of the most dangerous and well-known drug gangs in history.
At its strongest, the Medellin cartel controlled 80% of the world’s market for cocaine. Pablo and his Cartel killed thousands, and maybe even tens of thousands, of people along the way. A lot of these people who were killed were not criminals.
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Early Life
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949, in Rionegro, Colombia. Escobar was the third of seven children. His parents, farmer Abel de Jesus Dari Escobar Echeverri and teacher Hilda de Los Dolores Gaviria Berrio, had him when he was three. He grew up in Medellin, where he may have started doing bad things when he was a teenager. He is said to have sold fake diplomas and gravestones that were resold to local muggers. Escobar went to school for a short time at the Universidad Autonoma Latinoamericana but did not finish a degree. In the early 1970s, Escobar and his partner, Oscar Benel Aguirre, stepped up their criminal activities. They ran small scams and sold fake cigarettes and lottery tickets, among other things. He held a top executive from Medellin for ransom during this time and got $100,000.
Criminal Career
In 1975, Pablo started his huge cocaine business, which he called the Medellin Cartel. He had more than two dozen planes, including a Learjet and six helicopters, which he used to sneak drugs into Colombia, Panama, and the U.S. Escobar would buy cocaine paste in Peru, send it to a lab to be cleaned up, and then smuggle it into the country in plane tires. A pilot who helped bring drugs into the government could make up to $500,000 per flight. By the middle of the 1980s, there was a lot of demand for cocaine in the United States, and the Medellin Cartel was in charge of 80% of the drugs brought into the country illegally. They made about $420 million a week from this. The Cartel brought in more than 15 tonnes of medicines every day.
Escobar was already one of the ten wealthiest people in the world, with a net worth of $30 billion. At the height of his criminal career, the poor people of Medellin saw him as a hero, but the US and Colombian governments had already started looking for him. He had won over the people of Medellin by acting like a “superhero” by building sports fields, sponsoring children’s football teams, building houses, and giving out money through community activities. Many people helped Pablo avoid being caught by acting as lookouts and telling lies to the police.
Reign of Terror
Pablo’s fame led to a reign of terror in Colombia, where he was born and raised. Escobar was elected to the Colombian Congress in 1982, but he couldn’t hide his crazy wealth or how he got it. Two years later, he was forced to quit, and the judge who told people about his past was later killed. Pablo Escobar killed thousands of politicians, journalists, civil servants, and many innocent bystanders after he realized that his dream of becoming president of Colombia would not come true. He did this because he was angry at his political enemies.
Death And Prison
After Luis Carlos Galan, a liberal politician and journalist who had run for president twice and was a significant threat to the drug cartels, were killed by Escobar’s gang. The government finally took steps to catch Escobar. He worked out a deal with the government to turn himself in and stop all criminal activity in exchange for a shorter sentence. Escobar turned himself into the police in 1991. He couldn’t be sent to the US for his crimes because the new Colombian Constitution of 1991 made it illegal. Escobar was “in prison” in a place he owned called La Catedral. There was a football field, a bar, a Jacuzzi, and even a waterfall in the space. He kept running the Medellin Cartel inside the prison, so in July 1992, the government sent him to a regular prison. Pablo got away quickly, and a small army of Colombian drug police, DEA agents, and American special forces soldiers went after him. In 1993, someone shot and killed him on the roof of an apartment building. About 25,000 people attended Escobar’s funeral in Medellin, but his death was a significant relief for his home country and the rest of the world.
Money/Wealth
When Pablo was alive, and his drug cartel was doing well, he hired ten accountants to help him hide illegal money worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He reportedly spent $2500 monthly on rubber bands to wrap the money. That’s enough money every month to buy 250,000 rubber bands. Pablo supposedly had to write off $500 million in cash every year. After all, it went wrong because so much of the money was kept in basements and walls. Water damage and fires could ruin money, but rats that were hungry and thought the money was food were more likely to do it. When Pablo was on the run, he offered to pay off all of Colombia’s debt, which was more than $10 billion, if they made it illegal to deport people.
In 1987, Pablo’s wealth was first estimated by Forbes Magazine to be more than $1 billion. This was part of their first list of international billionaires. In that profile, Pablo’s earnings were put at $3 billion up to that point. Considering inflation, that’s the same as about $8 billion in dollars today. Every year for the next seven years, he was on the list of the world’s billionaires.
In the early 1980s, Pablo paid Panama’s leader, General Manuel Noriega, about $350 million to hide billions of dollars in the country’s banks. When that relationship went terrible, and Pablo’s money was frozen, the Cartel reportedly put a $1 million contract on Noriega’s life.
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Personal Life
In March 1976, when he was 26 years old, Escobar married 15-year-old Maria Victoria Henao. Her family didn’t like the relationship, so they ran away together. They had a son named Juan Pablo, whose name was later changed to Sebastian Marroquin, and a daughter named Manuela. Pablo may have had more than one affair while he was married.
Pop Culture
The story of Pablo Escobar’s life on cocaine has been told in many books, movies, and TV shows. Narcos, a play on Netflix that came out in August 2015 and is probably the most famous, is about the search for Pablo Escobar. Blow, Escobar, and American Made, all from 2001, was also shown on the big screen. When Pablo died, he owned four hippos. By the time he died in 2007, he had 16. Cocaine Hippos is a documentary made by National Geographic about them.
Final Words
Pablo Escobar is thought to have been one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. He Has a net worth of $30 billion. I hope this information is helpful to you. For more related updates. Stay connected to our website. NogMagazine.com