In most businesses, seeing a return on investment (ROI) of 100% would be more than enough for a company to thrive. By some estimates, notorious Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar enjoyed an ROI of as much as 20,000%. Put another way, for every $1 he put into his business, he got about $200 in return.

That is one seductive ROI, for certain. It doesn’t account for risk, but for most of Escobar’s professional life at the head of the Medellin cartel, the risk wasn’t his, nor was it financial: The risk fell to the lives of Pablo’s rivals and to the lives of the (mostly) American dealers who pushed his product to the users who snorted it. Only after his wealth, notoriety and brutality made him the target of both big governments and small (but determined) vigilante groups did Escobar finally endure some risk. Not surprisingly, on December 2, 1993, a day after his 44th birthday, it caught up with him in the most permanent way after a rooftop chase-down in a middle-class part of Medellin.



1. Rats Ate $1 Billion Of Pablo Escobar’s Profits Each Year

The first thing you didn’t know about Pablo Escobar testifies to an uncommon, staggering degree of wealth. According to Roberto Escobar, one of Pablo’s closest brothers, at a time when their estimated profits were circling $20 billion annually “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.”

If that weren’t enough to drop your jaw, Roberto adds that the cartel spent as much as $2,500 every month on rubber bands to “hold the money together.”

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2. Pablo Escobar’s Paradise Now Houses Refugees And Hippos

Near the small northwestern Colombian town of Puerto Triunfo, Pablo Escobar once built himself a vacation getaway befitting a man of his stature. Hacienda Napoles was just shy of paradise, spread across almost 5,000 acres (7.7 sq-mi.) and featuring everything from pools to a bullring to an exotic zoo with hippos, giraffes, elephants, and more. Stories of enormous drug-fueled parties at Hacienda Napoles with some of Colombia’s most powerful and most beautiful in attendance continue to circulate, contributing to the legend of Escobar.

Today, though, that paradise is in ruins. Everything that could be gutted has been gutted by people looking for rumored stashes of coke or cash. Its only residents are families of refugees from the country’s war against guerrilla fighters and about 20 hippos which roam the area with the same kind of impunity that Pablo enjoyed decades ago.

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3. Pablo Escobar Was Suspected Of Bombing The World Trade Center

Another thing you didn’t know about Pablo Escobar is that he was named as an early suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Shortly after the bombing, which killed six and injured over 1,000, a New York City prosecutor publicly suggested that the bombing could have been carried out by any “enemy of the U.S.,” including Escobar’s Medellin cartel.

Well, Pablo may have assassinated a presidential candidate (Luis Carlos Galán), threatened to kill the offspring of a sitting U.S. president (allegedly one of Bush Sr.’s sons), blown a commercial jet out of the sky (Avianca Flight 203), and orchestrated the attempted slaughter of the Colombian Supreme Court (Palace of Justice siege), but bomb the World Trade Center? Escobar was sufficiently offended, enough so that he sent a handwritten note to the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia declaring his innocence. “You can take me off the list,” he assured Ambassador Morris Busby, “because if I had done it I would be saying why I did it and what I want.”

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4. Pablo Escobar Built His Own Barrio

Medellin is Colombia’s second largest city (with almost 2.5 million residents), but it is, and always will be, linked by name to the legacy of Pablo Escobar’s cocaine cartel. To many of the city’s poorest people, Escobar — whom they called Don Pablo — was nothing short of Robin Hood in the flesh, a reputation he enjoys among some to this day.

In his prime, he was undeniably a public works tour de force, establishing food programs, building parks and soccer fields, but his masterstroke may have been Barrio Pablo Escobar, a neighborhood of 450 red brick homes housing a couple thousand of Medellin’s most indigent. Did they pay rent? Nope. Property taxes? No way.

The only problem? Writing for the Washington Post in 1989, Michael Isikoff noted a growing frustration among the barrio’s residents with kids from other areas coming to Barrio Pablo Escobar to peddle drugs.

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5. Pablo Escobar Bought A Learjet To Fly His Cash

The last thing you didn’t know about Pablo Escobar is that he had an interesting solution to a very rare kind of cash flow problem. Escobar and his cartel began to see soaring profits rather quickly. His being a cash business, Escobar needed to get that U.S. cash back to Colombia. For a while, the small plane he used to transport that cash was sufficient, as it could hold about $10 million. Keeping in mind Escobar’s estimated ROI of 20,000%, and that he was getting cocaine to the U.S. by a wide variety of methods (including a pair of submarines which would each carry about 1,000 kilos), it’s no surprise that he needed an upgrade. Escobar thus bought a Learjet, a substantially faster plane and one that could carry as much as 10 times the amount of cash. Problem solved.
http://factspy.net/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-pablo-escobar/

[b][/b]Personally i aint hailing what some consider a criminal although its debatetable based of the set of moral standards used. From the point of view of cashflow i am simply flagbagasted that i wish i was a reincarnate of this story in a righteous and religious way. I am not greedy. I have good plans for my people.Only some Nigerian pastors can beat this guy in the dough but they might never be caught because........... Nairalanders pls drop some kobo on this one.

Early life [edit]

Pablo Escobar was born in the town of Rionegro,[3] Antioquia, Colombia, the third of seven children to Abel de Jesús Dari Escobar, a farmer, and Hemilda Gaviria, an elementary school teacher.[4] As a teenager on the streets of Medellín, he would begin his criminal career, allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down for resale to smugglers. His brother, Roberto Escobar, denies this, claiming that the gravestones came from cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for site care and that they had a relative who had a monuments business.[5][dead link] He studied for a short time at the University of Antioquia.[6]
Pablo was involved in many criminal activities in Puerto Vallarta with Oscar Bernal Aguirre—running petty street scams, selling contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets, and stealing cars. In the early 1970s, he was a thief and bodyguard, and he made a quick $100,000 on the side kidnapping and ransoming a Medellín executive before entering the drug trade.[7] His next step on the ladder was to become a millionaire by working for the multi-millionaire contraband smuggler Alvaro Prieto. Pablo's childhood ambition was to become a millionaire by the time he was 22.[8]
Rise to power [edit]

In The Accountant's Story, Pablo's brother, Roberto Escobar, discusses how Pablo rose from being simple middle class and obscurity to becoming one of the wealthiest men in the world. At the height of its power, the Medellín drug cartel was smuggling fifteen tons of cocaine a day, worth more than half a billion dollars, into the United States. According to Roberto, Pablo's accountant, he and his brother's operation spent $2500 a month just purchasing rubber bands to wrap the stacks of cash. And since they had more illegal money than they could deposit in the banks, they stored the bricks of cash in their warehouses, annually writing off ten per cent (10%) as "spoilage" when the rats crept in at night and nibbled on the hundred dollar bills.[8]
In 1975, Escobar started developing his cocaine operation. He even flew a plane himself several times, mainly between Colombia and Panama, to smuggle a load into the United States. When he later bought fifteen new and bigger airplanes (including a Learjet) and six helicopters, he decommissioned the plane and hung it above the gate to his ranch at Hacienda Napoles. His reputation grew after a well known Medellín dealer named Fabio Restrepo was murdered in 1975 ostensibly by Escobar, from whom he had purchased fourteen kilograms (14kg). Afterwards, all of Restrepo's men were informed that they were working for Pablo Escobar. In May 1976, Escobar and several of his men were arrested and found in possession of 39 pounds (18 kg) of white paste after returning to Medellín with a heavy load from Ecuador. Initially, Pablo tried unsuccessfully to bribe the Medellín judges who were forming the case against him. Instead, after many months of legal wrangling, Pablo had the two arresting officers bribed and the case was dropped. It was here that he began his pattern of dealing with the authorities by either bribing them or killing them.[9] Roberto Escobar maintains Pablo fell into the business simply because contraband became too dangerous to traffic. There were no drug cartels then and only a few drug barons, so there was plenty of business for everyone. In Peru, they bought the cocaine paste, which they refined in a laboratory in a two-story house in Medellín. On his first trip, Pablo bought a paltry £30 worth of paste in what was to become the first step towards the building of his empire. At first, he smuggled the cocaine in old plane tires and a pilot could earn as much as £500,000 a flight depending on how much he could smuggle.[10]
Soon, the demand for cocaine was skyrocketing in the United States and Pablo organized more smuggling shipments, routes, and distribution networks in South Florida, California and other parts of the USA. He and Carlos Lehder worked together to develop a new island trans-shipment point in the Bahamas, called Norman's Cay. Carlos and Robert Vesco purchased most of the land on the Island which included a 3,300 foot airstrip, a harbor, hotel, houses, boats, aircraft and even built a refrigerated warehouse to store the cocaine. From 1978–1982, this was used as a central smuggling route for the Medellín Cartel. (According to his brother's account, Pablo did not purchase Norman's Cay. It was, instead, a sole venture of Carlos Lehder.) Escobar was able to purchase the 7.7 square miles (20 km2) of land, which included Hacienda Napoles, for several million dollars. He created a zoo, a lake and other diversions for his family and organization.[11] At one point it was estimated that seventy to eighty tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. every month. At the peak of his power in the mid-1980s, he was shipping as much as eleven tons per flight in jetliners to the United States (the biggest load shipped by Pablo was 23,000 kg mixed with fish paste and shipped via boat, this is confirmed by his brother in the book Escobar). In addition to using the planes, Pablo's brother, Roberto Escobar, said he also used two small remote-controlled submarines as a way to transport the massive loads (these subs were, in fact, manned and this is again documented in Roberto's book).[1]
In 1982, Escobar was elected as a deputy/alternative representative to the House of Representatives of Colombia's Congress, as part of the Colombian Liberal Party.[12] During the 1980s, Escobar became known internationally as his drug network gained notoriety; the Medellín Cartel controlled a large portion of the drugs that entered into the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic with cocaine brought mostly from Peru and Bolivia, as Colombian coca was initially of substandard quality. Escobar's product reached many other nations, mostly around America; although, it is said that his network reached as far as Asia.
Corruption and intimidation characterized Escobar's dealings with the Colombian system. He had an effective, inescapable policy in dealing with law enforcement and the government, referred to as "plata o plomo," (literally silver or lead, colloquially [accept] money or [face] bullets). This resulted in the deaths of hundreds of individuals, including civilians, policemen and state officials. At the same time, Escobar bribed countless government officials, judges and other politicians. Escobar was allegedly responsible for the murder of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, one of three assassinated candidates who were all competing in the same election, as well as the bombing of Avianca Flight 203 and the DAS Building bombing in Bogotá in 1989. The Cartel de Medellín was also involved in a deadly drug war with its primary rival, the Cartel de Cali, for most of its existence. It is sometimes alleged that Escobar backed the 1985 storming of the Colombian Supreme Court by left-wing guerrillas from the 19th of April Movement, also known as M-19, which resulted in the murder of half the judges on the court. Some of these claims were included in a late 2006 report by a Truth Commission of three judges of the current Supreme Court. One of those who discusses the attack is "Popeye", a former Escobar hitman. At the time of the siege, the Supreme Court was studying the constitutionality of Colombia's extradition treaty with the U.S.[13] Roberto Escobar stated in his book, that indeed the M-19 were paid to break into the building of the supreme court, and burn all papers and files on Los Extraditables—the group of cocaine smugglers who were under threat of being extradited to the US by their Colombian government. But the plan backfired and hostages were taken for negotiation of their release, so Los Extraditables were not directly responsible for the actions of the M-19.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar

I brand this Guy greatestman business of alltime by cashflow. What about the criminality? Most successfully businesses today engage in reprehensible behaviours that are morally decadent but legally within the limits of authorized perversion. Do you know how all the wealth in the U.S was made. My friends most of it is blood money from generations ago. The robber barons, the railroad magnates, slaying of the aborigines, rebellion in the name of freedom. The spanish consquitadors met over 200,000 Indians living in Jamica in btw 14th and 16th century and in 3yrs left only 30,000 in their search for gold. 170,000 dead even when there wasnt a real resistance. What about the English? When the Kingdom of the Stuarts and those before them couldnt finance their government adequately they set out to conquer other cultures like the Africans and today we justify their actions by saying "they enlightened us" . I ask at what price? How many millions of slaves and dead martyrs who wouldnt relinquish their land to the whitemen. I tell you it take a group of travelling Sage to return and develop his home for there to be development. If they have left us, we would have found out like the Japanese did and our progress would have been faster. And if they didnt destroy us there wouldnt be great Britian today. Today Nigerians with big CVs want to work with Exxon, Shell and Chevron. Before 1908 these companies were called Standard Oil and owned by J. D. Rockefeller. Do you know how he made his money aside the popular stories? Do you know how he ruined his competitors ? What about Nathan de Rothschild? Some quarters has it that he financed both the british and the french at the battle against each other. Its said Aristotle Onasis did thesame in the world war2. The Jews were responsible for the french revolution and the Jews invented Communism. The Western Jews strategical toppled the Czar of Russia, the Ottoman etc by their financing of their government machinaries. J.D.Rockefeller said" i make my money when blood is flowing in the street". War brings wealth. Relate it to Nigeria. Do you know how much Nigerian Govt made from the Biafran war? Aside Ojukwu , Achebe and The Igbo Elites, how many others were compensated for lost properties, bank deposits and even the eastern govt allocations? Tommorow just like Marijuana is being legalized in some countries, cocaine might too become. Think about 20billion a year profit for 10years with a capital of less than 10m dollars. Even Bill Gates wealth did climb that fast.

[quote author=Oxygenbutter77 post=16182955]I brand this Guy greatestman business of alltime by cashflow. What about the criminality? Most successfully businesses today engage in reprehensible behaviours that are morally decadent but legally within the limits of authorized perversion. Do you know how all the wealth in the U.S was made. My friends most of it is blood money from generations ago. The robber barons, the railroad magnates, slaying of the aborigines, rebellion in the name of freedom. The spanish consquitadors met over 200,000 Indians living in Jamica in btw 14th and 16th century and in 3yrs left only 30,000 in their search for gold. 170,000 dead even when there wasnt a real resistance. What about the English? When the Kingdom of the Stuarts and those before them couldnt finance their government adequately they set out to conquer other cultures like the Africans and today we justify their actions by saying "they enlightened us" . I ask at what price? How many millions of slaves and dead


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