The Chapo organized luxurious parties attended by employees and inmates of the Federal Center for Social Rehabilitation of Pont Gran, Jalisco and handled its own payroll of penal workers, notes British journalist Malcolm Beith in his book ” The last narco “.
Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera became the most famous poster in Mexico, and his eccentricities have been widely documented for years. Some writers and journalists point out that his notoriety dates back to the time when he began to commit crime.
The British journalist Malcolm Beith in his book “The Last Narcotics” notes that while in prison at the Federal Center for Social Rehabilitation in Pont Gran, Jalisco, Mexico, from where he first escaped in 2001, Chapo he organized parties attended by employees and inmates. He handled his own payroll of penal staff, Beith adds.
The newspaper Infobae also refers to a luxurious party held at the same penitentiary for Christmas and sponsored by El Chapo to which 500 liters of wine and lobster were brought.
In an interview with lawyer José Antonio Ortega Sánchez the lawyer is heard asking Loera why he had made him wait so long, he leader of the Sinaloa cartel replied that he had his conjugal visit that day and who then took a Turkish bath, then had to take a nap “to greet you as you deserve.”
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Chapo made his fortune trading cocaine in the United States during the 1990s. In 2018, during the trial against him, one of the events that aroused great attention internationally, a U.S. Government witness reported the level of life of his former boss.
Jets, luxurious homes on every beach in Mexico with pools and golf courses, ranches in each state and its own zoo that included tigers, lions, panthers and deer, and a train to ride it, as well as a yacht, “the Chapitô “, on his property in Cancun and” 4 or 5 women “were part of the luxuries that Loera maintained with his fortune.
Miguel Ángel Martínez Martínez, alias “la grossa” or “el Tololoche”, testified in a session before the New York court where he explained that his then boss gave him a Rólex watch with diamonds and during the nineties he paid him one million dollars in salary.
In a single month, he added, he was ordered to buy more than 50 cars, Buick, Thunderbird and Cougar, to give away to his workers, who could choose the model.
Martinez added that in the 1990s the drug business was “very good” and that Guzmán Loera benefited from the “cake boom”, and that he used part of the money to pay bribes and be able to maintain the your business.
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He further stated that the capo received one or two trucks a month coming from the United States with the money from the sale of the drug, and that he later sent his jets to collect this money in Tijuana, which was taken to Ciudad Mexico and deposited in bank accounts, after bribing employees, part of which he invested in property.
Journalist Anabel Hernández in her book “The Lords of the Narcotics” says in her writing that at the former Sheraton Bugambilias Hotel in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, the Chapo rented an entire apartment to accommodate.
His desire to gain notoriety also led him to seek out actor and producer Sean Penn to make a film of his life, which he modestly began in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, his impressive escapes from the prison and its economic power.
“El Chapo,” the world’s most wanted drug trafficker, was captured in Sinaloa more than three months after Penn and Kate De el Castell interviewed him on Oct. 2, 2016, and six months into a spectacular escape from a maximum security prison in central Mexico.
In July 2019 he was sentenced to life in prison for continuously maintaining a criminal organization and 30 years for the violent use of weapons.
Scheme of the cells inside the Supermax prison, where Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán is serving his life sentence. Photo / Courtesy
This archive photo taken on February 13, 2019 shows a view of the United States Maximum Administrative Penitentiary Facility, also known as ADX or “Supermax,” in Florence, Colorado. Photo / AFP