Pablo Escobar - Wealthiest criminal

No one disputes that Pablo Escobar was a murderer, a torturer, and a kidnapper. But he was loved by many in Medellín, Colombia. and he is an object of fascination abroad. At his zenith, he was the most notorious outlaw on the planet, with control of some 80% of the cocaine entering the U.S. and of a fortune estimated at $30 billion. In many respects, he remains Colombia’s most famous citizen, a charismatic entrepreneur of boundless ambition who delighted in his Robin Hood image, even as he killed thousands of people to subvert the government. 

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (1949-1993)

• Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist. His cartel supplied an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States at the height of his career, turning over US $21.9 billion a year in personal income. 
• He was called "The King of Cocaine" and was the wealthiest criminal in history, with an estimated known net worth of US $30 billion by the early 1990s (equivalent to about $56 billion as of 2017), making him one of the richest men in the world in his prime.
• It was estimated that 70 to 80 tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. monthly. His drug network competed with rival cartels domestically and abroad, resulting in murders of police officers, judges, locals, and prominent politicians.
• On December 2, 1993, police traced a phone call between Escobar and his son. Colombian special forces swooped in. Escobar was killed at the house, felled by three bullets as he stood on its roof. 
• His two brothers believe that he shot himself through the ear. The duo stated that Pablo "had committed suicide, he did not get killed. During all the years he would say that if he was really cornered without a way out, he would 'shoot himself through the ear'.
• Escobar made it to Congress in 1982, and began working to build a political constituency in and around Medellín. His electoral ambitions did not go very far. He was denounced as a gangster by Colombia’s justice minister. Escobar fought back, falsely accusing the minister of being in the pocket of narcos. But a newspaper editor dug up an old news story showing that Escobar had been arrested, seven years before, for the possession of thirty-nine pounds of cocaine. Escobar was ejected from Congress, and the FBI began investigating him. He went underground, and a long hunt began. Escobar spent seven years as a fugitive.
• He had killed innocent people, and cut victims into pieces, but had done so because his enemies had done that to his people, too. In those days he had been fighting what he thought was a war against a corrupt state and its extradition treaty with the United States.
• Escobar was held directly responsible by various media publications for the 1985 storming of the Colombian Supreme Court by left-wing guerrillas, known as M-19. The siege, which was in retaliation for the Supreme Court studying the constitutionality of Colombia's extradition treaty with the U.S., resulted in the murders of half the judges on the court M-19 and burn all papers and files on of cocaine smugglers who were under threat of being extradited to the U.S. by the Colombian government. Escobar was listed as a part of Los Extraditables. 
• 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. 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.
• 13 Unbelievable Facts About Pablo Escobar.
• Pablo Escobar - Biography - Drug Dealer (1949–1993)
• At the height of Escobar’s power, he built himself a paradise: La Hacienda Nápoles, a 7,000 acre estate three hours from Medellín. Escobar spent years converting the property from an isolated wilderness to a refuge, with paved roads, artificial lakes, and a private zoo stocked with zebras, hippopotamuses, and giraffes, as well as a series of life-size dinosaur sculptures. Guests had the use of swimming pools, a party house, stables, a bullring, a vintage-car collection, and a fleet of speedboats. After Escobar’s death, the compound was abandoned, its structures ransacked by memento seekers and by treasure hunters. After being repossessed by the state, Hacienda Nápoles was reopened in 2007, as a theme park with a zoo, a water park, and several family-friendly hotels.
• A journalist Alonso Salazar suggested that he had merely been a conduit for the country’s bigotry and violent impulses. He said that Pablo Escobar’s legacy had profoundly altered political and social life. Narcotrafficking came along and just overwhelmed everything. Escobar débuted the instruments of terror, and afterward everyone used them.
• Psychopaths are loving with their kids and murderers. A woman insisted that she had not wanted to make Escobar a hero since he had kidnapped her mother and killed her uncle. But a  person that was able to do what Escobar did, has also a normal face. And people have to learn that that’s the way people are, they have two sides.
• Narconovelas set up an alternative moral political structure in which the state, government, politicians, law enforcement, bureaucrats, and soldiers are seldom portrayed as the good guys. The heroes are always either lone rangers or misunderstood drug dealers.
• Álvaro Uribe, former President of Colombia. bemoaned the appeal of antiheroes: “People love bandits, no matter what we do.” In a profoundly unequal country, Escobar represented a form of economic mobility. “When there are no regular paths to get out of where you are, the bandit is the one who makes it -- the one who can jump ahead.”  
• Escobar also appealed to a perverse sense of patriotism. The oath of Los Extraditables “Better a tomb in Colombia than a cell in the United States” resonated with Latin Americans sensitive about Yankee intervention.
• In 2009, Escobar’s son, Juan Pablo, appeared in a documentary called “Sins of My Father,” in which he contacted victims of his father and apologized on behalf of his family. 
• Juan Escobar, his mother, and his sister Manuella, at first fled to Mozambique. Juan Pablo chose the name "Sebastián Marroquín" from the telephone book and adopted it as his new name since he needed a new identity as he believed his original name was cursed. Manuella now lives in Central North Carolina under an alias. 
• “I know about everything my father did, and I will go to each and every one of the families of his victims to ask forgiveness. But I’m not legally culpable. My personal slogan is ‘I inherited a mountain of shit. So what am I supposed to do with it?’ ”
• A professor wrote, “We live the culture of drug trafficking, inaesthetic, values, and references. We are a nation that took on the narco idea that anything goes if it will get you out of poverty: some tits, a weapon, corruption, trafficking coca, being a guerrilla or a paramilitary fighter, or being in government.” He was careful to note that the narco aesthetic was not merely bad taste. It was a way of life among the dispossessed communities that look to modernity and have found in money the only way to exist in the world.
• Escobar left behind a model of success: build support among the disenfranchised by providing them with money and power they would not otherwise have; in return, they will be your loyalists, your spies, and your gunmen. For the middle class, use your wealth to corrupt policemen, generals, judges, and politicians.

He showed us the path we must never take as a society because it's the path to self-destruction, the loss of values and a place where life ceases to have importance ...  Pablo Escobar's son Sebastián Marroquín

A novelist described Escobar as a monstrous Pied Piper: “At the height of his splendor, people put up altars with his picture and lit candles to him in the slums of Medellín. It was believed he could perform miracles. No Colombian in history ever possessed or exercised a talent like his for shaping public opinion. And none had a greater power to corrupt. The most unsettling and dangerous aspect of his personality was his total inability to distinguish between good and evil.”

After Escobar, the idea of rebellion based on ideology was largely supplanted by the remorseless pursuit of profit and power. In places along his supply chain, including Mexico and in Central America, the remnants of his operation have grown into insurgent gangs, and states have succumbed to corruption and internal conflict. Today’s youth still see narcotrafficking as a way to make quick money. Society doesn’t change, really. And those with the greatest responsibility for this are those in the media, with their television series and their books.