11 Insane Facts About Pablo Escobar’s Wealth That Will Blow Your Mind
Narcos is back and, if you’re like most people, it’s got you wondering if you’d have it in you to run the world’s biggest drugs cartel. I know I wouldn’t - I’m far too boring and I don’t like dealing with cash.
Obviously I can’t speak for you but, generally, my best advice is to avoid breaking the law with the buying and selling of illegal narcotics.
But just so you know what you could be in for if you did it right (and in the 80s), here’s some crazy facts about just how minted Pablo Escobar really was:
1. Too much money, if anything…
During the mid 1980s, Escobar’s cartel brought in roughly $420 million a week. That’s around $22 billion a year.
2. Forbes knew it too
In 1987, he was listed as the seventh richest man in the world. He made the Forbes list of international Billionaires for seven years straight - from 1987 until 1993.
3. It was pretty likely that, if you were using coke in the 80s, it was his…
By the end of the 1980s, he supplied 80% of the world’s cocaine, meaning that only one in five cocaine users weren’t snorting an Escobar product.
4. Rats ate billions of dollars of his money but he didn’t care
Pablo Escobar earned so much money so fast that he couldn’t effectively launder it all. He would store some in farms, abandoned warehouses, cartel members’ houses and the like but, due to lack of circulation, he would lose around 10% of it. In his book, his brother and chief accountant, Roberto Escobar, wrote:
“Pablo was earning so much that each year we would write off 10% of the money because the rats would eat it in storage or it would be damaged by water or lost”
That’s around $2 billion a year but Escobar didn’t really mind!
5. He spent more money on rubber bands than most people earn
When you’re earning that much money, you need to be able to keep it in easily manageable stacks, right? That’s why Escobar would expense $2,500 every month on rubber bands.
6. He burnt his cash to keep his daughter warm
Escobar’s son, Sebastián Marroquín, recounted the time when his family were on the run from the law stating that, because Pablo’s daughter became hypothermic in a hideout in the Medellín mountainside, he burnt $2 million in crisp bank notes to keep her warm.
7. He made pilots rich by bribing them
He would pay pilots up to $500,000 a go for smuggling cocaine over the borders in their plane tires. He was also known for soaking jeans in liquid cocaine, legally shipping them abroad and then extracting the cocaine on arrival.
8. He wasn’t named the king of cocaine for nothing
Because cocaine was so popular during the 80s, at its peak, Escobar’s Medellín cartel was shipping 15 tonnes of the white stuff to the United States each day.
9. He was nicknamed Robin Hood for helping the poor
He built housing, constructed 70 football pitches and opened a zoo for the poor. In fact, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration mused that his importing of exotic animals for the zoo brought along more trouble from the government than his drug shenanigans did.
10. He had humble, yet still illegal, beginnings
Before the whole drugs thing, Escobar made his money by selling stolen tomb stones and used cars.
11. He tried his ‘get out of jail’ card
While trying to change the laws of extradition, Escobar offered to pay the whole sum of Columbia’s $10 billion national debt.
Before you go off thinking that he’s some kind of saint, Escobar was responsible for the deaths of over 4000 people…
H/T: Forbes, Business Insider, GQ