Who was Pablo Escobar, notorious Colombian drug lord and billionaire criminal mastermind?

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has compared YSRCP chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy to Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Naidu slammed the state of law and order and alleged drug menace in the past five years when Reddy led the state as CM. But who was Pablo Escobar?

Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord who rose to infamy as the leader of the Medellín cartel. He was considered the world’s most powerful drug trafficker in the 1980s and early 90s.

Born in December 1949 in Colombia's Rionegro, he began criminal activities while in his teenage. He dropped out of college and began engaging in activities such as selling illegal cigarettes and fake lottery tickets and participating in motor vehicle theft. His father was a farmer and his mother was a schoolteacher. He was arrested for the first time in a car theft case in 1974. Pablo was one of the wealthiest criminals in history, having amassed an estimated net worth of USD 30 billion at the time.

He was the founder and sole leader of the Medellín Cartel and dubbed 'the king of cocaine'. Escobar founded the Medellín Cartel in 1976, which distributed powder cocaine and established the first smuggling routes from Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, through Colombia and eventually into the US.

Subsequently, there was an exponential demand for cocaine in the US. By the 1980s, it was estimated Escobar led monthly shipments of 70 to 80 tons of cocaine into the country from Colombia. As a result, he quickly became one of the richest people in the world. In 1993, Pablo was killed in his hometown by Colombian National Police. Later, his Medellín cartel collapsed.

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