VIDEO: 15 Insane Facts About Pablo Escobar

If you don’t know who Pablo Escobar is, well… Under which rock have you been living?!

The famous drug lord had quite and interesting, complex life.

If you want to learn more about it, you should watch the video below, as it presents 15 insane facts about Pablo Escobar you probably had no idea about.

According to Wikipedia, during the height of its operations, the Medellín Cartel brought in more than US $70 million per day (roughly $22 billion in a year).

Smuggling 15 tons of cocaine per day, worth more than half a billion dollars, into the United States, the cartel spent over US $1000 per week purchasing rubber bands to wrap the stacks of cash, storing most of it in their warehouses. Ten percent (10%) of the cash had to be written off per year because of “spoilage”, due to rats creeping in and nibbling on the bills they could reach.

When questioned about the essence of the cocaine business, Escobar replied with “[the business is] simple: you bribe someone here, you bribe someone there, and you pay a friendly banker to help you bring the money back.”

In 1989, Forbes magazine estimated Escobar to be one of 227 billionaires in the world with a personal net worth of close to US $3 billion while his Medellín Cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market.

It is commonly believed that Escobar was the principal financier behind Medellín’s Atlético Nacional, which won South America’s most prestigious football tournament, the Copa Libertadores, in 1989.

While seen as an enemy of the United States and Colombian governments, Escobar was a hero to many in Medellín (especially the poor people). He was a natural at public relations, and he worked to create goodwill among the poor of Colombia. A lifelong sports fan, he was credited with building football fields and multi-sports courts, as well as sponsoring children’s football teams.

Escobar was also responsible for the construction of houses and football fields in western Colombia, which gained him popularity among the poor. He worked hard to cultivate his Robin Hood image, and frequently distributed money through housing projects and other civic activities, which gained him notable popularity among the locals of the towns that he frequented.

Some people from Medellín often helped Escobar avoid police capture by serving as lookouts, hiding information from authorities, or doing whatever else they could to protect him.

At the height of his power, drug traffickers from Medellín and other areas were handing over between 20% and 35% of their Colombian cocaine-related profits to Escobar, as he was the one who shipped cocaine successfully to the United States.

The Colombian cartels’ continuing struggles to maintain supremacy resulted in Colombia quickly becoming the world’s murder capital with 25,100 violent deaths in 1991 and 27,100 in 1992. This increased murder rate was fueled by Escobar’s giving money to his hitmen as a reward for killing police officers, over 600 of whom died as a result.

Soon after Escobar’s death and the subsequent fragmentation of the Medellín Cartel, the cocaine market became dominated by the rival Cali Cartel until the mid-1990s when its leaders were either killed or captured by the Colombian government.