A nephew of infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar has said he found a plastic bag with money worth $18m (£14m) hidden in the wall of one of his uncle's houses.
Nicolás Escobar told Colombian media
"a vision" indicated where to look for the money in the apartment
where he lives in the city of MedellÃn.
He said it was not the first time he found
money in places where his uncle used to avoid capture, as Escobar reportedly
hid millions in properties.
He died in a police shootout in 1993.
At the peak of his career, Escobar was
said’ to be the seventh richest person on the planet.
Rumours of Escobar's hidden fortunes have
circulated in MedellÃn since his death, after he spent decades waging war
against the Colombian state to prevent his extradition to the United States.
Nicolás Escobar told Colombian TV channel
Red+ Noticias he had also found a typewriter, satellite phones, gold pen, a
camera and a film roll yet to be developed.
"Every time I sat in the dining room
and looked towards the car park, I saw a man entering the place and
disappearing," he said.
"The smell [inside] was astonishing.
A smell 100 times worse than something that had died."
Some of decades-old banknotes were decayed
and no longer usable, said Nicolás Escobar, who has been living in the
apartment for the last five years.
In the interview, he said he accompanied
his uncle on many occasions, and that he was once kidnapped by individuals
looking for Escobar's whereabouts: "I was tortured for seven hours. Two of
my workers were attacked with a chainsaw."
Who was Pablo Escobar?
Escobar was born in Rionegro, Colombia in
1949 and established a drug cartel in MedellÃn in the 1970s.
At its most active, the gang supplied an
estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States.
His wealth catapulted him into the Forbes
list of global billionaires for seven years.
After the US issued an extradition order,
Escobar resisted capture and his gang targeted politicians, the police and
journalists.
After he was arrested’ in 1991, Escobar
was housed’ in a prison of his own design, nicknamed the Cathedral, where he
continued to oversee the Medellin Cartel.
In all, Escobar is thought’ to be
responsible for some 4,000 deaths.
But his humble roots made him popular
among some Colombians whose support he cultivated by giving out large amounts
of cash and investing in poor neighborhoods in Medellin.
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