The judgment of The Chapo lays bare his life again rich

Joaquin El Chapo Guzman began to smuggle cocaine because he was poor. “I didn't have to eat,” says Miguel Angel Martínez, known among members of the Sinaloa cartel as The Jackpot. To sell oranges and loaves of bread baked by your mother passed on a few years to accumulate a fortune that allowed him to become with a fleet of four private planes, mansions dotted by the best beaches in Mexico and even a zoo in one of its many ranches.

“All of this was thanks to the boom cocainero of the beginning of the nineties,” wrote Martinez on Tuesday in the seventh day of the trial against the drug lord mexican held in Brooklyn (New York), while the prosecution showed the jury the picture of a LearJet 36 Bombardier parked in a hangar. When he started working as a pilot for Guzman narrates, his boss had “nothing”. The ascent was dazzling and before he was arrested for the first time spent 10 million dollars to buy a property in Acapulco, in the mexican Pacific.

The LearJet 36 of The Chapo

The Fat came to be the right hand of the capo of the drug. “It was the best business in the world,” he said in the trial. At the pier of the mansion had moored a yacht called Chapito, always according to the testimony of the second witness who cooperates with the prosecutor's office, arrested in Mexico in 1998 and extradited three years later to the united STATES. El Chapo is facing a life sentence for having led a plot by a criminal that has allowed the Sinaloa cartel to introduce 155 tons of drugs in the united States in a quarter of a century.

In the lawsuit, Miguel Angel Martinez noted at all times the defendant as his "boss". The defense, which ensures that The Fat they spent $ 4,000 a day on cocaine) attempts to demonstrate that, in fact, El Chapo was one more.

Came to be so rich Chapo to his ranch in Guadalajara (Jalisco, the region where he began to build the poster) had, among other things, four swimming pools and a zoo with tigers, lions, panthers, and deer. “Guests travelled in train,” said The Fat to expose the extravagances of the new rich.

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The trips abroad became more frequent as he grew older the cash. “We were in Brazil. Argentina, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, and once went Kolaybet to Switzerland to get a rejuvenation treatment. Also to Macau to play.” The Fat man received, according to his account, the orders of his boss to make generous gifts to the people that will clothing: “A December had to buy 50 luxury cars. They could choose between three models”.

But keep all this opulence cost a lot of money. “About 12 million dollars a month,” says Martinez, which was presented to the jury as the manager of the business of Guzman. He spoke of all the women with whom he had a romantic relationship, "his family was very large." And of the feasts that he organized. "He liked the cognac," he said. The salary that he received from his boss was low for all you had to do, he says: a million dollars a year.

The story of Miguel Angel Martinez focuses on the early phase of the criminal organization. He was in the pay of Guzmán between 1987 and 1993. Among his responsibilities was to manage in your name the money made from the sale of the drug in the united STATES. The private planes were used to transport the cash from the border to Mexico City, in batches of 10 million. The witness explained that the money that rained from heaven was introduced after the banking system: “If you asked me to say that it was for a business of export of tomatoes”.

The war

The benefits of the illicit activities were also used to purchase properties with false identities to launder the drug money or building societies cover for the criminal enterprise could perform its operations, such as the shipment of cocaine in cans of jalapeños. The cash also went to pay bribes to the forces of order in Mexico, the acquisition of houses on both sides of the border for the construction of tunnels and to fight against the rival cartel of Tijuana.

The war that opened with the brothers Arellano-Felix had two key moments that gave relevance to the figure of El Chapo: the shootout in the nightclub, Christine and the murder of cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo. “Became all famous between the press and politicians”, he told, “it became very difficult to operate because their pictures were in the national chains every ten minutes.” Guzman ended up being arrested in June of 1993, when he was trying to escape to El Salvador.

The Fat man took charge temporarily of all their possessions and bribed an official of the jail to “take care” to El Chapo. Managed to pass him a mobile phone so that he could communicate with the outside world and continue to lead the organization. Guzman asked, in addition, to take care of all his women and his family. "I didn't have the character to take his place and lead the poster," he admitted.