The Medellín drug cartel invests a portion of the huge sums of money they receive from drug trafficking in legitimate causes in an attempt to legitimize their illegal profits in this way.
According to the Colombian police investigation, the legal assets of the Medellín drug cartel amount to tens of billions of dollars, and the legal companies are as many as hundreds, including banks, construction companies, real estate companies, radio stations, car companies and large shopping malls. It seems to be an independent kingdom. As the power of drug cartels has become larger and larger, the illegal activities of drug cartels in social life have also become more aware, bold, and unscrupulous.
No one knows how much money the Medellín cartels made. In 1984, the group proposed to the Colombian government that they had a lot of wealth as long as it recognized the legitimacy of its property and released several prominent criminals who were willing to pay tens of billions of dollars in foreign debt to the government.
As the head of the world's largest drug cartel, Pablo escobar is extremely wealthy. He has a park covering an area of 600 hectares. It has six aircraft of various types and one bulletproof vehicle. There are more than ninety manors and villas under his name. He had 2,000 cronies, servants, bodyguards, and gunmen. In Port Trionford, Escobar built a private zoo with more animals than all the zoos in Colombia combined. In order to raise parrots, the cost of buying sunflower seeds for feed each month is equivalent to a month's wage income of Colombian workers.
However, Medellín Cartel Group's drug lords and drug lords make huge profits each year in billions of dollars in cash. In order to hide the stolen money, they deposited huge amounts of cash in some banks in Panama, the Bahamas and other countries under false names. In June 1987, the Colombian judiciary stopped enforcing an agreement with the United States on the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States, which made drug dealers even more unscrupulous. They began moving cash from abroad to the country, and by the end of the same year, an estimated $2 billion had flowed back to Colombia. Drug lords large and small squander money and live extremely luxurious lives. They used cars, planes, horses, estates, and houses to showcase their wealth. Their real dream is to buy personal dignity and thus gain a place in traditional social activities.
The development of the cocaine industry has brought huge profits to Medellín. The hotel here is superb with indoor pool, tennis court and small bullring. The hotel is surrounded by high-class residential areas, and some buildings have installed huge circular antennas to watch satellite TV programs. In a newly built luxury building, there is a multimillion-dollar apartment with a swimming pool on each high balcony. All of this earned Colombia the title of "Empire of Drugs."