Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Pablo Escobar burnt £1m in cash to keep warm on the run

Pablo Escobar: Pablo Escobar burnt £1m in cash to keep warm on the run The Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar burnt cash worth more than £1 million to keep his daughter warm during a single night on the run, his son has claimed.

The infamous cocaine baron is said to have lit a bonfire using wads of US dollars at a mountain hideout while he was being hunted by authorities.

Sebastian Marroqui­n, who has changed his name from Juan Pablo Escobar, claimed his father burnt the notes when he realised his daughter Manuela was suffering from hypothermia.

They also used the fire, fuelled by $2 million in cash, to prepare food.

Escobar's son, who moved with his family to Argentina after his father's death 15 years ago, also told the Colombian magazine Don Juan the security-mad billionaire bought his own taxi firm to find out when outsiders arrived in their native Medellin. He also moved his family every 48 hours between 15 hideaways he had all over the city.

He even blindfolded them before each move so that they could never work out the whereabouts of each house and give the locations to torturers if they were captured.

Escobar, head of the infamous Medellin Cartel, was shot dead in December 1993 as he tried to escape police.

At the height of his power in 1989, he was ranked the seventh richest man in the world by Forbes magazine with an estimated £18 billion fortune.

via Pablo Escobar burnt £1m in cash to keep warm on the run - Telegraph.

Money couldn't buy him love.

1 comment:

Ann said...

Yeah, the market for cocaine in the US really booming during the 1980s.

According to the 3 year investigation by a Senate subcommittee headed by John Kerry, Ronald Reagan's "war against drugs" meant turning one's head, if Colombian drug lords and their accomplishes were aiding in Reagan's other war against the popularly elected Nicaraguan Sandinistas.