In the late seventies, in the town of Medellin, located in Colombia, a cocaine cartel arose and formed. The founders of this crime syndicate were several Colombian drug lords. It existed until 1993, when the government of the South American country liquidated and arrested most of its members.
Rise of the cartel
What is the Medellin cartel, Colombians know firsthand. The date of creation of the drug cartel is the summer of 1977, when a number of small groups of criminals united into one. The Ochoa brothers, Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha and Pablo Escobar were the main creators and persons to whom the entire Medellin cartel was subordinate. Klaus Barbier, a famous Nazi, according to some claims, also contributed to the formation of this criminal organization.
Crime organization strategy
Unlike others, the Medellin cartel, whose leader's photo was known to a few then, specialized in the supply of narcotic drugs in smaller quantities. The destinations of these shipments were countries North America and Europe. The head of the cartel, Pablo Escobar, provided his customers with guarantees that they would receive an order in any case, and if the party was stopped law enforcement will compensate them for their losses. The criminal syndicate had everything necessary for the delivery of drugs: auto and air transport, ships, submarines.
Income and structure
The Medellin cartel can be ranked among the most powerful and strongest drug organizations in the world. In its best days, this community generated an income that could be up to $60,000,000 a day. In the 1980s, the Medellin cartel controlled almost 80 percent of the world's cocaine trafficking. During its existence, the organization has received a profit, which, according to various experts, ranges from tens to hundreds of billions of US dollars.
The structure of the drug cartel was very extensive. It consisted of many groups, each of which had a specific task. But main goal each group was the delivery of drugs to their destination. These groups mainly consisted of Americans, Canadians, Europeans, so there were a lot of undercover US informants and agents among them.
Pablo Escobar
In his thirties, the leader of the criminal community, Escobar, has become a billionaire, according to some, the richest man on earth, or at least one of the richest. Pablo Escobar's fortune was so huge that he could afford to have more than thirty estates, forty rare cars, his own airport, two dozen artificial reservoirs dug in the territory of his villa.
Competitors
Less powerful, but still causing trouble for the Medellin cartel, was another Colombian syndicate, the Cali cartel. The confrontation between these organizations then faded, then again gained strength. It was this cartel that made efforts to disintegrate and destroy Pablo Escobar's organization.
The government's fight against the criminal community Medellin
After Colombian law enforcement agencies became aware of the existence of the Medellin cartel and its activities, its members were taken under close surveillance. After collecting sufficient evidence to accuse the police, the participants were arrested, after which the trials were held, the convicts went to jail. But among these, there were mostly foreigners, one way or another connected with drug trafficking, while there were very few Colombians themselves, and even more so cartel leaders among the convicts.
Treaty between Colombia and the United States
The second half of the eighties for the Colombian cartel was successful in terms of control over the entire society of the country. The branches of the criminal organization covered almost all areas of his life.
However, at the same time, the struggle of the US leadership against drug trafficking intensified, the administration of then-incumbent President R. Reagan, one might say, declared war on the drug lords. One of the steps for this was the following. The United States and the leadership of Colombia have concluded an agreement between themselves. Under its terms, the Colombians were obliged to extradite to the United States the leaders of criminal organizations involved in the sale and transportation of drugs to the United States.
Such an agreement was not at all in the hands of the Colombian barons. If the law enforcement officers had detained them and placed them in a Colombian prison, then this would not have been a problem for them, since they would feel at home there and could quite calmly manage their business further, and after a short time they would be completely released . If they were sent to an American prison, the drug lords would not be able to do anything like that. Therefore, Pablo Escobar and other leaders were very unhappy with such an agreement with the American government and tried by all means to have the government of Colombia cancel it. One of the crime syndicate's mottos was: "It is better to lie in a grave in Colombia than to be in a US prison."
Some of the supporters of this agreement with the United States were such Colombian figures as Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, many judges from Supreme Court countries.
Terror and violence
In order to strengthen their positions, the leaders of the drug cartel began to use such methods as bribes, intimidation, and terror against the supporters of the treaty. However, none of this helped, and with endless raids by law enforcement agencies, the Medellin cartel lost many of its people. Many leaders of the drug cartel groups were forced to go underground or leave the country altogether, instructing their people to eliminate all supporters of the agreement with the United States before that. Since that time, a war began between the criminal syndicate and the governments of the two countries, from which mostly civilians died. civilian people. The criminals would stop at nothing. They planted explosive devices in places with the greatest concentration of people. Among these were shopping malls, other public places. As a result, the Medellin Cartel killed and maimed tens of thousands of ordinary Colombian citizens.
In August 1989, criminals killed Luis Carlos Galan, who was the most likely contender for the presidency in Colombia. This was the answer given by the Medellin cartel, Escobar in particular, to the statement of Galan, who promised to end the drug traffickers in Colombia. Terror organized by the leaders of the criminal community before presidential elections, increased several times, daily members of the drug cartel killed dozens of people, staged explosions in various crowded places, committed demonstrative murders of famous Colombian figures. All this was aimed only at stopping, stopping the extradition of criminals to the United States.
Striving for power
It is noteworthy that Pablo Escobar aspired to the power circles of Colombia. So, in 1982, he got into the Congress of the country, where he served as a substitute congressman, that is, he participated in meetings if the main congressman was absent. But such a position, of course, was not enough for an ambitious man who loves power. He wanted to become However, here he was somewhat surprised, because, contrary to his opinion, people from the districts located outside Medellin did not popularize him so much. On the contrary, Escobar in the same Bogota was considered a dubious person. True rumors circulated about him, revealing his shady business, and some politicians openly stated that Escobar was a cocaine baron. Among them was Luis Carlos Galan, and later Rodrigo Lara Bonilla took the necessary measures against the use of drug money in the election race. The result of this was the exclusion of the leader of the Medellin cartel from the highest authorities of the country. The further way here was booked for Escobar, his career as a politician was over.
"Los Pepes"
At first last decade last century, several Colombian civilians created an organization called "Los Pepes". It was an abbreviation for the people who suffered from Pablo Escobar. Relatives and relatives of people who died at the hands of the cartel became members of this organization. In addition, there were other people who hated the criminal activities carried out by the Medellin cartel. Los Pepes were engaged in tracking down and eliminating everyone who was in any way involved in the functioning of the drug cartel. In a fairly short time, the organization destroyed more than three hundred defendants of the criminal syndicate. This, so to speak, public organization has caused very significant damage to the activities of the Colombian drug cartel.
End of the cartel
Law enforcement agencies of the country and the United States also did not doze off, they carried out raids on the syndicate in all directions. Both small groups and larger ones with their leaders were liquidated. The destroyed laboratories for the production of cocaine fell under the destruction, as well as the sources of this potion themselves - coca plantations.
In December 1989, one of the key figures Medellin cartel. These are Gilberto Rendon and José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, who committed suicide when attacked by the police.
A year later, the Ochoa brothers voluntarily surrendered into the hands of law enforcement officers. This was done in response to a promise not to transfer them to the United States.
By 1993, the main part of the leaders and members of the Medellin cartel was either destroyed or detained by law enforcement agencies, and on December 2, 1993, they went on the trail of the leader of the criminal community. The place where Pablo Escobar was located was surrounded by operational officers. During the firefight, Escobar tried to flee, but was shot dead by a sniper from the Los Pepes community.
Formally, from that moment on, the Medellin cocaine cartel ceased its activities, but even before the end of the millennium, law enforcement agencies detained and arrested its former members.
Orejuela Brothers
While flashy guns are a must in the movies, the Cali cartel preferred to keep a low profile, which helped them earn up to $7 billion a year at their peak. The Cali cartel, led by the Orejuela brothers, became the largest supplier of cocaine to the United States in the 90s. During its activity, members of the cartel managed to smuggle more than 200 tons of drugs.
Glorious days for them ended in 2006. Ironically, the brothers gave them up own boss guards when he got tired of the stress of protecting notorious drug lords. They were convicted on September 26, 2006 of conspiracy to commit money laundering and sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.
Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha
Despite being born in Colombia, José Gacha was known as "El Mexicano" due to his love of Mexican pop culture, not to mention the fact that he first established trade routes through Mexico to the southeastern United States. He also played a key role in setting up remote laboratories in the Colombian jungle, where thousands of workers lived and produced great amount cocaine. During one of the raids by the drug enforcement agency in 1984 on one of these laboratories, records were found showing that 15 tons of coca paste were delivered to the location within six weeks.
Just a year after he was named to Forbes magazine's annual billionaire list, Gacha's reign came to an end when he was shot dead by police in 1998. Although there are still rumors that he survived, this version is sharply contradicted by the fingerprints taken from the body. And the fact that the body was without a head.
Ochoa brothers
The Ochoa brothers (Jorge, Juan David and Fabio) played a key role in the Medellin organization from the very beginning, despite the fact that they came from an intelligent wealthy family. Having accumulated huge fortunes, comparable to their partners in the 80s - their personal fortune is estimated at $ 3 billion (Jorge was ahead of José Gacha in Forbes list for a year) - the brothers began to have problems in 1984 after the publication of an article in the Washington Post newspaper, which described in detail the activities of an undercover DEA agent, Barry Seal, who managed to infiltrate this organization. Four members of the cartel were indicted by a federal grand jury as early as the end of that month. They were based on these data.
All three brothers surrendered to the authorities by 1991, and all three were released by 1996. Almost nothing has been known about them since, with the exception of Fabio: Ochoa's youngest brother was re-arrested for drug smuggling in 1999 and was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in 2003. He died in prison of a heart attack on July 25, 2013.
"Speedy" Rick Ross
"Speedy" Rick Ross was something of a celebrity. If you believe his official website, then 
that the CIA contributed to the epidemic 
crack in the 80s are completely true. He claimed that the American intelligence agencies provided him with "unlimited" material to sell, and he certainly sold it and sold a lot. Of course, if that were true, then Rick wouldn't have been talking about such things for a long time.
By the age of 19, Rick was already a professional cocaine dealer in Los Angeles, at the epicenter of the epidemic that took over the streets with inexpensive, quickly addictive crack. Indeed, he was one of the first to sell crystalline heroin that could be smoked and, at the height of his power, he had several crack factories that made enough of the drug to make $2-3 million a year. day.
Daoud Ibrahim Kaskar
Daoud Ibrahim Kaskar, an Indian crime boss with an estimated net worth of over $6 billion, is one of the world's most violent criminals. He was involved in the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed over 250 people. She also had close ties to Osama bin Laden and ran a powerful organization called the Goldman Sachs of Organized Crime.
His organization, known as the D-Company, ran large-scale drug dealing operations and was involved in virtually every type of criminal activity from extortion, terrorism, to the film industry. She financed several popular Indian films and is believed to have received significant amount income from Bollywood.
The peak of Kaskar's power is probably behind him: he is currently the most wanted man in India and is believed to be hiding in Pakistan. For its part, Pakistan denies that it is on its territory, but it seems that everyone has heard something like this before.
Coca will make a lot of money on pasta, even if it inadvertently wipes tens of thousands of people off the face of the earth. Pablo Escobar, the Ochoa brothers, the Mexican and Carlos Leder all ran the Medellin Cartel, one of the biggest criminal organizations of the 20th century that built a cocaine empire in two countries and made billions of dollars.
The heroes of the project are looking for the dirty money of the Colombian drug mafia Millions of Pablo Escobar“ on the Discovery Channel, and we will tell you who is who in the Medellin cartel.
Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha: liar, talker and gull
His father was a simple pig farmer from the town of Pacho and could not imagine that his son, who had already left school in the third grade and started working to help his dad, would become brutal killer and one of the most famous drug lords in history.
Little Jose, a waiter and conductor, behaved quite decently until the mid-seventies, until he met with “ emerald king“ Gilberto Moreno, who took the quick-witted Gacha under his wing. Killing people turned out to be much more profitable than carrying trays, and soon José earned a reputation in the Moreno gang as a ruthless killer.
Gacha switched from emeralds to cocaine after meeting Victoria Vargas, a drug dealer from Bogota, who brought him together with Escobar.
Entering the ruling elite of the Medellin cartel, in the late 70s, Jose created one of the largest laboratories in the jungle and set up cocaine supplies to Texas and California through Mexico, for which he received the nickname Mexican - as well as for his love for sombreros, tequila, jewelry , noisy parties, expensive cars and virtuoso abuse.
For nine years, Gacha basked in luxury, and cocaine from his laboratory killed hundreds of people, but by the early nineties, the Bush Sr. administration declared war on the Medellin cartel, and the Mexican lost almost $ 62 million frozen in American accounts.
He fell into the hands of the authorities almost immediately, but after the death of almost a hundred people in a terrorist attack organized by Gacha and Escobar, they did not judge him. The Mexican was shot on the spot with a heavy machine gun, and what was left of Gacha most of all resembled his father's farm at the time of slaughter. However, Day's son and a lot of money still remained, but where he is and where these dollars are is unknown.
Source: wikipedia.org
Griselda Blanco: First of the Corleone Family
The life of a girl with the name of an evil sorceress from fairy tales, where they talk more with animals than with people like her, did not work out from the very beginning. Having changed the awl of the slums of Cartagena for the soap of the same poor quarters of Medellin, Griselda and her mother began to earn a living with what they could.
At the age of 11, the girl was already a thief, a prostitute and a murderer, so it is obvious that nothing good could come from her. And so it happened: until the age of twenty, Blanco worked in brothel and robbed everyone she had, and then she met drug dealer Carlos Trujillo and bore him three sons.
Later, Dixon, Uber and Osvaldo would die in shootouts with mommy competitors, but then the young family was just starting their business: the Trujillo couple went to the United States to establish cocaine sales there.
Things went well, but Griselda did not want to share with Carlos and killed him. The same fate awaited her second husband, drug dealer Alberto Bravo, who moved Blanco to Queens. With a shot at Alberto, Griselda killed two birds with one stone: both her annoying husband and her main competitor.
Having licked her wounds, Blanco returned to business and by the mid-70s turned Miami into a sorting yard for the Medellin cartel, and in the end she left it, starting her own business. On her account, according to various sources, from 40 to 240 murders, but the bullet did not pass Griselda herself - after prison term in the United States, deported to Colombia in 2004 and released on bail, the queen of cocaine was shot by a hitman on the threshold of a butcher shop.
Her fourth son became the heir: Griselda, a lover of crack, orgies and torture, named the child after the character of the most famous crime novel - Michael Corleone Blanco. It is not difficult to guess that the choice of a life path for a boy with that name was also small - like his mother.
Source: wikipedia.org
Ochoa clan: repentant farmers
Once upon a time there were three brothers named Ochoa Vazquez: poor sons of a horse rancher, unprincipled, but terribly enterprising and smart. Juan David, Jorge Luis and Fabio started off as petty street crimes, then made a small fortune selling marijuana to uncomplicated Miami hippies.
Deciding that this would not be enough for them, Juan and Jorge returned to Colombia to establish production on coca plantations, and Fabio was left in Florida as a logistician for the family firm. Things soon went uphill, and the brothers decided to team up with another major cocaine dealer, Pablo Escobar. And so the Medellin cartel was born, and the brothers became one of the most powerful businessmen in the world, billionaires - and definitely entered the list of the most disgusting people in history.
None of them had an affair with cocaine in vain: in 1993, the cartel was liquidated after an open war with the authorities of Colombia and the United States, and two years before that, Juan, Fabio and Jorge nevertheless realized that Escobar's bloody terror was too much, let's go back down and handcuffed voluntarily.
The brothers, in exchange for information, asked not to be sent to the United States, where they would receive life sentences. They were released from a Colombian prison after only 5.5 years, but remained persona non grata.
Juan returned to his father's ranch with Jorge and bred horses there, did charity work and in every way atoned for the sins of youth - until his death in 2013.
Jorge is still doing the same thing, and the police have not a single reason to find fault with him, so it is surprising but true that the older Ochoa realized everything they had done.
Alas, the younger Fabio was not so pious, and in 1999 he was again imprisoned for cocaine smuggling, but this time in the United States and for 30 years: the last of the Ochoa clan is still in federal prison in Georgia.
Source: www.vanguardia.com
Dolly Moncada: Black Widow Kiko
Fernando Galeano and Gerardo Moncada, nicknamed Kiko, could not know what role they would play in the fate of the Medellin cartel: mainly because both turned into piles of ashes. Buddies in the early nineties actually ran the Medellin cartel, while the head of the drug business was in solitary confinement " La Catedral“.
Having gained access to the huge money of the tops of the cocaine business, Moncada and Galeano could not resist, but their revelry did not last long: in the spring of 1992, they were both already in torture. Escobar, having learned that Fernando and Kiko were stealing money from him, tortured his henchmen to death.
Bodies with bullet holes in the knees and torn out nails were secretly taken out of the “ La Catedral“and burned, but the murder of the closest associates, especially such a cruel one, did not please many members of the cartel, and especially Dolly Moncada, Kiko's wife.
According to one version, it was Dolly who created “ Los Pepes“- a community affected by the actions of Pablo Escobar, which was headed by the personal bodyguard of the Black Widow, Don Berna. Formally, it was an organization for the relatives of those whom Escobar sent to the next world, but in reality it was another criminal group with appropriate methods: murders, arson, threats to the family, fierce battles of competitors.
Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez(Spanish Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez) - a former Colombian drug dealer, one of the founders and the second most important head of the once most powerful financial and cocaine organization - "", which at one time controlled up to 80% of the world's drug trafficking.
Is the middle of three brothers one of the most influential families 70-80s - the so-called clan Ochoa(Spanish El Clan Ochoa), which, in addition to Jorge Luis, included his siblings (Spanish Juan David Ochoa Vásquez) and (Spanish Fabio Ochoa Vásquez). According to experts, the Ochoa clan controlled about 30% of the cocaine exported by the Medellin Cartel.
In 1987, Forbes magazine listed Jorge Luis Ochoa as one of the 20 richest people on the planet, with a personal fortune of over $3 billion.
Early years and early criminal career
Jorge Ochoa was born on September 30, 1950 in (Spanish Medellin) in the family of a motorcyclist and owner of a ranch for breeding the elite breed of horses "Paso Fino" and domestic bulls - Fabio Ochoa Restrepo(Spanish Fabio Ochoa Restrepo). Already at an early age, he left school and began to help his father in horse breeding and livestock work. Also in his youth, he began to help his mother maintain a small family restaurant "Margarita", located on the outskirts of Medellin.
In the early 70s, Jorge Luis and his brothers went to Texas, USA, to trade horses. In 1978, they ended up in Miami, where, just at that time, the Hippie culture began to actively emerge in the United States. As you know, where there are hippies, there is marijuana. Realizing that the marijuana trade can get rich quickly, the Ochoa brothers were able to infiltrate this business, becoming one of the largest drug dealers on the coast.
Fabio, Jorge Luis and Juan David Ochoa
Later, enterprising young people switched to a harder drug - cocaine. It was Ochoa who was one of the first to develop new routes for the supply of Colombian cocaine to the United States. It is known that Jorge Luis and Juan David were in Colombia at that time and were engaged in setting up an uninterrupted production of cocaine. At the same time, the younger brother Fabio was responsible for his reception and distribution in Florida.
Rise of criminal activity
According to the report of the DEA (Eng. Drug Enforcement Administration - Office for Drug Enforcement, USA), it was Jorge Luis Ochoa in the mid-70s. came up with a "brilliant idea" to unite the largest drug dealers in Medellin in single organization, thus, teaming up with, and, in the summer of 1977, the Medellin cocaine cartel was created, which turned into one of the most powerful criminal syndicates in world history, like a state within a state: the cartel had its own clandestine laboratories hidden in the jungle, as well as a well-established drug delivery and distribution network, including aircraft, ships and even the latest submarines.
In December 1981, among other relatives of Colombian moneybags, was abducted Native sister Ochoa is 26-year-old Martha Nieves (Spanish: Martha Nieves Ochoa), whose kidnapping was organized by a guerrilla group whose leaders demanded $ 12 million from the Ochoa clan for her release.
In response, the brothers called an emergency meeting with 223 local drug dealers and large landowners. At this meeting, the question of creating an organization was raised, the purpose of which was to counter the antics of partisans and other subversive groups that carry out kidnappings and murders of people. Thus, a paramilitary organization called " Death to the kidnappers» (MAS, Muerte a Secuestradores).
According to some reports, each member of the newly formed organization contributed 2 million pesos and 10 the best people. Thus, the MAS own army immediately began to have a cash fund of 446 million pesos and 2230 armed fighters. After 92 days, after a series of brutal reprisals against the partisans and their loved ones, Martha Nieves was released.
July 17, 1984" The Washington The Times published an article that provided irrefutable evidence of the illegal activities of the cartel, documenting the illegal importation of 1,400 pounds of cocaine into the United States. The close connection of the cartel with the highest political leadership of Nicaragua, from where cocaine was transferred to the United States, was also exposed. Responsible for this leak was a former cartel pilot (born Barry Seal), who later became an anonymous DEA informant (February 19, 1986, Seal was killed in Button Rouge, Louisiana, USA).
Ten days later, Escobar, Leder, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez and Rodriguez Gacha were formally charged in Florida Federal Court. The next day, all four were put on the international wanted list.
On November 15, 1984, Jorge Ochoa was arrested by the Spanish police in Madrid. American government insisted on his extradition to the United States, but Spain refused to extradite the criminal and for almost 2 years he remained in this country until July 14, 1986 he was extradited to. According to the idea, Jorge Ochoa was waiting for the same fate as Carlos Leder - he was supposed to be extradited to the United States, however, after members of the Medellin cartel raised a wave of unprecedented mass murders and publicly warned the Colombian authorities that they would kill ten judges for each Extradited to the United States Colombian, the court, of course, immediately did not find any serious charges against Jorge Luis - all that was brought against him was limited to the charge of illegally importing a batch of fighting bulls from Spain into Colombia. He was sentenced to the minimum term of imprisonment, later deadline and was completely replaced by a conditional one.
Leaving the cartel
By the end of the 80s. The Medellin cartel, led by Escobar, began to wage open war against the Colombian government. The country is mired in global terror. For 2 years, the number of victims at the hands of the sicario reached a thousand people, among whom were politicians, judges, journalists, policemen, etc. On the orders of the drug lord, an airliner performing Flight 203 was blown up, on board of which there were 107 passengers (approx. election campaign advocated the adoption of a law on the extradition of especially dangerous criminals to US prisons).
It is noteworthy that the Ochoa brothers never supported the bloody policies of Escobar and were not involved in the acts of bloody drug terror that swept the whole country.
In 1990, the Ochoa clan unanimously withdrew from the Medellin Cartel.
Voluntary surrender to the authorities
In September 1990, President Caesar Gaviria Trujillo offered drug traffickers a reduced prison sentence in Colombia in order to encourage them to surrender to the authorities. Unlike Pablo Escobar, the Ochoa brothers accepted this offer and began to negotiate with the government in writing. After receiving official guarantees from Caesar Gaviria to exclude the possibility of their extradition to the United States, they agreed to admit almost all the charges against them.
Jorge Luis was the first to surrender to the Colombian authorities in January 1991, followed by Fabio. Juan David was the last to surrender on February 16 of the same year.
On January 15, 1991, all three were sent to the armored prison in Medellin's industrial suburb of Itagüí to serve time on charges of drug trafficking. They were sentenced to 8 years and 4 months in prison. However, for exemplary behavior they were released after 5 years, 5 months and 21 days.
It is noteworthy that the brothers spent their entire term in the same cell, and their mother cooked food for them with her own hands, because she was worried that another cook might try to poison them.
Later years
After the release of Jorge Luis, unlike his younger brother Fabio, tied up with the underworld. Together with his older brother Juan David, he returned to breeding thoroughbred stallions.
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