Here's a Visual Breakdown of Pablo Escobar's Immense Fortune
$1000 USD per week on rubber-bands alone to keep stacks neat and organized.
Netflix’s Narcos does a pretty good job of retelling the drama and politics behind Pablo Escobar’s infamous Medellín Cartel, what with all the cop-killing and illicit drug trafficking. However, it’s hard to get a grasp of the criminal enterprise’s financial scale once the profits hit the billion-dollar mark. Luckily, the above video does a pretty good job of expounding on the cocaine kingpin’s empire: for example, a kilo of cocaine costs the Cartel roughly $5,000 USD-$1,000 to produce, $4,000 to transport. Once it was in the states, that same brick would flip for between $50-70K USD. At its peak, El Padrino and company were moving 15 tons of coca per day — this equals $60 million USD in revenue per diem or roughly $22 billion USD per year.
Their wealth was so immense that the cartel ended up spending $1,000 per week just on rubber bands. If it were listed on the Fortune 500, Escobar’s empire would rank 129th, earning more annual revenue than both Starbucks and Facebook.
You can learn more from the informative clip above.
