The Accountant's Story Analysis

In The Accountant's Story, Pablo's brother and accountant, Roberto Escobar, discusses the means by which Pablo rose from middle class simplicity and obscurity to become one of the world's wealthiest men. At the height of its power, the Medellín drug cartel was smuggling fifteen tons of cocaine per day, worth more than half a billion dollars, into the United States. According to Roberto, he and his brother's operation spent $1000 per week purchasing rubber bands to wrap the stacks of cash, storing most of it in their warehouses; 10% had to be written off per year because of "spoilage" by rats that crept in at night and nibbled on the hundred dollar bills.[8]

In 1975, Escobar started developing his cocaine operation. He even flew a plane himself

He and Carlos Lehder worked together to develop a new island trans-shipment point in the Bahamas, called Norman's Cay. Carlos and Robert Vesco purchased most of the land on the island, which included a 3,300 foot airstrip, a harbor, hotel, houses, boats, aircraft and even built a refrigerated warehouse to store the cocaine. From 1978 to 1982, this was used as a central smuggling route for the Medellín Cartel. (According to his brother's account, Pablo did not purchase Norman's Cay. It was, instead, a sole venture of Carlos Lehder.) Escobar was able to purchase the 7.7 square miles (20 km2) of land, which included Hacienda Napoles, for several million dollars. He created a zoo, a lake and other diversions for his family and organization.[11] At one point, it was estimated that seventy to eighty tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. every month. At the peak of his power in the mid-1980s, he was shipping as much as eleven tons per flight in jetliners to the United States (the biggest load shipped by Pablo was 23,000 kg mixed with fish paste and shipped via boat, as confirmed by his brother in the book Escobar). In addition to using the planes, Pablo's brother, Roberto Escobar, said he also used two small remote-controlled submarines to transport the massive loads (these subs were, in fact, manned and this is again documented in Roberto's