Mexican Drug Lord Chapo Guzman’s Properties in Colombia

Dozens of properties linked to the Mexican drug lord Chapo Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, are found throughout Colombia. Guzman, now serving a life sentence in the United States, emerged from relative anonymity in the 1980s—a period dominated by Colombian drug cartels—to amass significant wealth over the last thirty years before his incarceration.

The formation of the Sinaloa Cartel allowed the Mexican drug trafficker to gain crucial international contacts, boosting his business significantly. At the peak of his illicit operations, he expanded his reach to over 50 countries, prompting him to purchase properties abroad, beyond Mexico.

Of all his connections in Latin America, the most important, without a doubt, was the one he forged with the Medellin Cartel, which served to sell cocaine from this Colombian nucleus in Mexico and to the US.

Constant travel to Colombia

This is why Joaquin Guzman, also known as Chapo Guzman, frequently visited Colombia to acquire a variety of properties, funded by the illicit earnings from his operations.

According to journalist Malcolm Beith in his book The Last Narco: El Chapo, the Mexican drug trafficker owned mansions, offices, buildings, hotels and farms, properties scattered all over Colombia.

Some of these properties were found in remote areas of the country, while others were in larger cities. “We have evidence of some Mexicans settled in Medellin, Cali, Pereira, and Barranquilla,” said General Oscar Naranjo, who was the director of the Colombian National Police at the time.

At the time, a total of 78 properties in Colombia were counted, which, through frontmen, swelled the wealth of the Mexican drug lord. These properties are said to be located in nine places in the country: Cali, Palmira, Jamundi, El Cerrito, Bugalagrande, La Cumbre, Valle del Cauca, Puerto Boyaca, and Bogota.

Following the fall of the drug lord in 2014, a large number of these properties in Colombia were seized by the state.

A fortune difficult to calculate

According to the British-American author, in 2009 Colombia confiscated properties worth more than 50 million dollars. In the same year Guzman was included in the World List of Billionaires in the 701st place, with the minimum wealth necessary to appear of exactly “one billion dollars”. During 2010 and 2011, he remained on the list, but ranked lower, at 937 and 1140, respectively.

The majority of Chapo Guzman’s properties are in the name of frontmen and corporate networks, making it difficult to determine his exact wealth. Forbes magazine verified the difficulties of obtaining real information about the total properties and fortune accumulated by the drug lord in its attempt to make the list of billionaires on a global scale.

According to the figure revealed during his trial in 2019, the Mexican drug lord accumulated a fortune of more than 12.5 billion dollars, although this was described as “exaggerated”. The fate of this money is uncertain, because although the Mexican government has insisted its country’s legal right to confiscate and recover it, during the term of President Donald Trump in the US, the possibility was raised that part of this seized wealth could be used for the construction of the controversial wall between the two countries.

Silanoa Cartel still active

Despite the arrest of Chapo Guzman, the Sinaloa Cartel remains active, now under the leadership of Ismael Zambada Garcia and Chapo’s sons. According to law enforcement sources, it is estimated to operate in more than 100 countries.

In Colombia, the presence of this criminal organization has also been detected, especially in the outskirts of Barranquilla. A 2022 report by the military attaché’s office of the Mexican Embassy in Colombia, published by W Radio last year, reveals links between the Mexican mafia and the Char family clan, which dominates regional politics.

The Mexican document explains that there is a “financial network from which illicit money is operated for electoral purposes in the department of Atlantico,” in Colombia. The leaders of this “parapolitics scheme,” which according to the report has been active since 2014 and has infiltrated the Sinaloa Cartel, are: former senator Fuad Char Abdala; his son, former mayor of Barranquilla and current candidate for that office, Alex Char; former Magdalena governor Luis Miguel Cotes; and businessman José Galo Abondano.

Alex Char, who swept the October 29 local elections and was re-elected mayor of Barranquilla, the capital of the department of Atlantico, has strongly denied the accusation. However the report claims, among other things, that this money laundering network provided US$24 million to Alex Char’s presidential campaign in 2022, in which Gustavo Petro was finally elected president.