Roberto Escobar: "My brother said he felt like Robin Hood"
The Telegraph had an exclusive interview with Roberto Escobar about his drugtrade and the rise and fall of the Medellin Cartel.
Medellin (Colombia) - At the side of his notourios brother Pablo (picture on the left), Roberto Escobar co ruled the biggest and most dangerous crime group of the last decades, the notourius Medellin-Cartel of Colombia.
The Escobar brothers shipped huge amounts of cocaine to Europe and the US, infiltrated legal companies and used there billions of drugmoney to kill there enemies and control the region. At the hight of thei're power the 2 brothers had a bankacount with 24 billion dollars. They kept the 30 million people of Colombia in a tight deathgrip with their campagne of terror, until in 1993 after an intensive man hunt by an elite Colombian police unit he was shot dead. With Pablo Escobar dead, an end was put to the growing power of the Medellin Cartel, but cocaine remained as Colombia's top export product.
Pablo's brother Roberto has allready served 10 years in prison and was known as 'the minister of finance' within the Medellin Cartel.
Salsa music is chanting trough the narrow streets of Itagui, a suburb of Medellin, when we are on our way to the clinic where one of the biggest drug bosses of all time is being treated and kept under tight security.
Roberto Escobar - A.K.A. 'El Osito' (the bear) - is partly blind and deaf since in he received a bombletter inside the maximum security prison in Medellin in 1993.
The chief of the carcel maxima seguridad moved Escobar to Clinica Antioquia, named after the Colombian state with Medellin as it's main city.
The city is with it's 1.8 million people the biggest city in Colombia behind Bogota.
'The City of eternal spring' - what Medellin is often called - has never seen as much prosperity as during the reign of Pablo 'El Doctor' Escobar, a guy who went from street thug to the world's best known Cartel boss.
With the help of his brother Roberto, Pablo made Medellin the centre of international drugtrade.
Pablo ruled his Medellin Cartel with an iron hand until he - on December 2nd 1993 - was shot down on a roof in the streets of Los Olivos after an intensive manhunt that went on for months and had the worlds eyes on it from the get go.
Roberto - who was the boss of all the finances of the drug cartel - had allready surrenderd to the authorities in October 1992.
In prison he recently wrote the book: 'Mi hermano Pablo' (My brother Pablo), a book that speaks nothing but good words about Pablo Escobar a man who has killed thousands.
The guards who keep an eye on Roberto Escobar day and night have just taken a break when we are being taken to his room in the maximum security clinic.
A few minutes later 'Don Roberto' arrives, accompanied by 2 of his own bodyguards.
The small man swiftly shakes our hands and sits down on the edge of his bed.
We've waited days until we got approval from the authorities to interview Escobar.
It looked like we had to wait a lot longer, until suddenly we got word that everything was ok and we could come and interview Escobar.
During the period that the guards are away Roberto Escobar speaks freely and shows us pictures from the family album.
On the wall there is a portret of his mother Hermilda, his closet is full with drawings made by children and his room also has some pictures of Roberto during his cycling carreer in the 1960ies.
On another spot there hangs a color picture of his son Jose Roberto, who at the age of 17 was killed by 2 sicarios (assasins) when he was working out in a gym.
And above his bed there is a life size poster of his third wife, super model Claudia Patricia.
A picture of his brother Pablo also hangs on his wall, his brother during a traditional Colombian folk dance.
Intelligent
"Pablo was a good brother to me", Roberto tells us.
"He always was kind and friendly.", "At school he helped all his friends with theire homework".
"Pablo was very intelligent, I always knew that he would one day become a great business man, he never smoked cigarettes and hardly drank alcohol."
"He did enjoy weed and his favorite beer: Heineken."
"His dream was to become the president of Colombia"
In the village Envigado, south of Medellin, where the brothers grew up, Pablo was the big street thug in the bars around the village centre.
As a tough street guy he put fear in the hearts of the local population, that population saw him get richer and richer.
With the use of brutal violence in the seventees he managed to get control of the cocaine trade.
He killed the competition and took over theire business.
In 1976 he married - at age 26 - Maria Victoria Henao.
"She always stayed the love of his life", Roberto tells us.
The local bisshop had to approve of the marriage since the bride was only 15 years old.
According to several biographies, Pablo always preferred sex with young girls.
His widow wife now lives somewhere in Argentina, and is fighting Pablo's other family members for his billions.
"Pablo controlled all drugtrade", "But I controlled the money, I was the acountant."
Roberto had a full day job of managing all the money that came in.
In the mid eighties the drugcartel owned real estate all over the world.
In Medellin alone Pablo owned 19 villa's, all with helicopter landing areas.
He owned banks, appartments and huge amounts of land.
The cocaine trade became a complete industry with factory's, a fleet of ships an airplanes and an army of white collar criminals to launder the money.
In 1989 Forbes rated Pablo Escobar 7th in the list of the world's richest people.
According to Roberto Pablo used a part of his wealth to help the poor people of Medellin.
"One time we were driving by this garbage dump and saw people living there all clamped together in these tiny huts", right there Pablo said: "We are going to change that."
Pablo built 2500 houses for these people, it's called Barrio Pablo Escobar.
"My brother saw himself as a modern Robin Hood."
It was a carefully built image that Pablo promoted in his own newspaper.
Behind that facade a hard and cold world full of greed found shelter.
The cartel had become a multinational wich was making tens of billions.
Roberto: "We namely invested in the US, but I also travelled to Europe, about 5 times.
Together with Pablo I visited Amsterdam several times."
"I didn't use a false passport, I just travelled under Escobar, no problem."
Roberto and Pablo met with many world leaders and high place politici in mid and south America.
Intelligence agencies revealed that the Escobar brother were close friends with the Suriname government during the 1980ies.
The Brazilian government has photo's of the Escobar brothers meeting with Desi Bouterse (then military dictator of Suriname).
How well do you know Desi Bouterse? we ask.
Roberto looks to the ceiling and says: "We did good business everywhere, we never used names, only nick names, that's all I got to say."
Passports
More willing to talk are some of Escobars men whom we contacted in Medellin.
One of them knows a lot about the contacts between the Medellin cartel and Dutch drugs criminals.
This Ricardo tells us how members of the Medellin cartel have pretty much unchecked passage to Holland.
"In Aruba we got great contacts with high level people."
"An immigration guy who is able to provide us with legit Dutch passports, so we can travel the world free without any worries."
The man tells us in wich bar in Oranjestad (Aruba) he meets the corrupt Aruban official and how much a passport costs: $50.000.
"Several of my friends traveled to Europe with an Aruban passport, such a passport is the ultimate cover for Colombians that have to go to Europe for business."
Nobody tells us any names, if they do the Colombian cartel will surely kill them.
Our guy keeps his mouth closed when we ask what the Arubans officials name is.
However Roberto Escobar does tell us that Vladimoro Montesinos - who recently has been arrested in Venezuela and delivered to Peru - has had close ties to the Medellin cartel when he was chief of the Peruan secret service.
According to Escobar Montesinos took money from the cartel to finance the campagne to get Alberto Fujimori into the presidents seat of Peru.
"We gave Montesinos at his request 1 million dollars to finance the presidential campagne of Fujimori and I got proof."
Montesinos would supposedly have met Pablo Escobar on a secret trip to Pablo's huge estate, Hacienda Los Napoles about 120 kilometres east of Medellin.
Los Napoles was Pablo's most spectaculair villa, with 6 swimming pools and a zoo with hundreds of exotic animals.
There were enough bedrooms for 100 guests and Pablo even had lakes placed on his estate so he could water ski.
Whenever he had guests he would show them his masterpiece: an American oldtimer from the 30ies, filled with bullet holes.
According to Pablo it was the car once owned by Bonny and Clyde.
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