Whitewash

Pablo Escobar, king of the Medellin Cartel in Colombia, had a fortune estimated at $5 billion. The son of a farmer, he begun his career stealing tombstones and quickly evolved into a car thief, freelance gunman and kidnapper. By the mid-1970s he was trading cocaine. His forces of hit men became small armies, he had a payroll of judges, politicians, generals and presidents. A wanted man, he was assassinated by the Colombian police in 1993. This book paints a picture of a man who, although totally ruthless in business, firmly believed that he was working for the good of his country, twice offering to pay off its national debt. Using Escobar's life as a lens through which to focus on the cocaine trade in general, the book exposes the corruption behind the legitimate facades of governmental and financial institutions both in Colombia and the West.