![]() These days, Roberto Escobar, having served fourteen years in prison, earns money by leading tourists around one of his family’s former safe houses. Once, during an extended hike through the forest to elude capture, he threw a briefcase containing a hundred thousand dollars into a river, because it was heavy. Although Roberto was never as extravagant as his brother, he was accustomed to flying on private jets, and sent his children to a Swiss boarding school. Known as El Osito, or Little Bear, he was the older brother of the narcotrafficker Pablo Escobar, who was then among the richest men in the world, responsible for a drug-smuggling empire that extended from Colombia to a dozen other countries. When Roberto Escobar was the head accountant for the Medellín cartel, in the nineteen-eighties, he handled billions of dollars a year-so much cash that he sometimes resorted to stuffing it in plastic bags and burying it in the countryside. To hear more feature stories, download the Audm app for your iPhone. Juan is now an architect and author, having published a book about life with his dad titled: “ Pablo Escobar: My Father.”Įscobar by Escobar is being aired Sky Documentaries and NOW TV.Audio: Listen to this story. The Escobar’s settled in Argentina after being rejected asylum from several countries and travelling through Mozambique and Brazil. It was a pledge that had serious consequences, “Those five seconds of threats ended up becoming 25 years of exile,” he explained. Initially, he vowed to avenge his dad as in old footage he shouts how he is going to “ kill those b*****ds” who shot his father. He said: “All the weapons in Colombia were pointing towards me.” Sixteen months after his escape from prison, Pablo Escobar was shot dead in 1993, when Juan was just 16-years-old and was now in charge of his dad’s drug empire. “That was the last time I saw my father alive. ![]() We turned to go into the building, he honked a couple of times and carried on his way. “When we were about to leave, I went towards the Altos building and my dad followed us in a car. Before we left, he came towards us, hugged me, he wanted to speak but he couldn’t utter a word. Juan recalls the last him he saw his father alive, “I remember we were at Casa Azul, where we were hiding with my father at the time. Though this plan didn’t last long and after eight months the Escobar’s realised the dangers of living in exile and the difficulty to escape, and so the family sought the protection of the Colombian government. He added: “ You didn’t know where you were, but you were with him.” We were in at least six different safe houses. “We’d go to places blindfolded, we’d go to various hiding spots. “My father asked us to hide with him because we couldn’t be safe outside,” he said. Pablo Escobar was shot dead aged 44 in 1993 Sky When Escobar eventually handed himself into police in 1991, he escaped from his self-built “ La Catedral” prison just a year later, where Juan details life on the run as a teen after he and his family to fleed with his dad. “When you are born an Escobar, you have no right to happiness or calm.” Juan Pablo - who now goes by the name of Sebastian Marroquin - explains what it meant to be the son of Pablo Escobar. ![]() Others featured in the series described how Juan never wore the same clothes twice, and was surrounded with “machine guns, cocaine shipments, prostitutes, amongst bags of money and millions of dollars, aeroplanes, yachts, luxury cars” throughout his childhood. He described his father as “one of the richest men on the planet” was able to provide some shocking stats about his dad’s power in the drug cartel business during his “golden age,” Juan revealed at this time the country of Colombia “had 200,000 acres planted with cocaine.”įor a typical weekend in Miami alone, Escobar “had an average income of between 50 and 70 million dollars.” Juan as a child (left) with father Pablo Escobar (right) Sky “When I was four, my dad gave me my first motorbike,” he says. ![]()
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