from http://lilomag.com/2010/06/24/world-most-wantedtop-10-drug-lord/
The drug lord a person who controls a sizable network of persons involved in the illegal drugs trade. Such figures are often difficult to bring to justice, as they might never be directly in possession of something illegal, but are insulated from the actual trade in drugs. Let check out our top 10 list.
1 ) Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (December 1, 1949 – December 2, 1993) was a Colombian drug lord. Escobar gained world infamy from the drug trade and in 1989 Forbes magazine listed him as the seventh richest man in the world with a personal fortune of nearly US$9 billion at that time. In 1987 Forbes magazine estimated Escobar to be the seventh-richest man in the world with a personal wealth of close to $25 billion, while his Medellín cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market.While seen as an enemy of the United States and Colombian governments, Escobar was a hero to many in Medellín (especially the poor people); he was a natural at public relations and he worked to create goodwill among the poor people of Colombia.
A lifelong sports fan, he was credited with building football fields and multi-sports courts, as well as sponsoring little league football teams. The war against Escobar ended on December 2, 1993, as he tried to elude the Search Bloc one more time. Using radio triangulation technology provided as part of the United States efforts, a Colombian electronic surveillance team found him hiding in a middle-clclass barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Alvaro de Jesús Agudelo AKA El Limón, ensued. The two fugitives attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police.
2 ) Amado Carrillo Fuentes
Amado Carrillo (December 17, 1956 – July 3, 1997), Born in Guamuchilito, Sinaloa, Carrillo was a Mexican drug lord and boss of the Juárez Cartel. He became known as “El Señor de Los Cielos” (Lord of the Skies) because of the large fleet of jets he used to transport drugs. He was also known for laundering over US$20 million via Colombia to finance his huge fleet of planes. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration described Carrillo as the most powerful drug trafficker of his era. He died in a Mexican hospital after undergoing extensive plastic surgery to change his appearance. In his final days Carrillo was being tracked by Mexican and U.S. authorities.
Carrillo was given a large and expensive funeral in Guamuchilito, Sinaloa, where he was revered as a kind of “Robin Hood” by the people, according to a special report in the Diario de Juárez. He was known for giving away money, cattle, and presents to hundreds of people, including cars such as Ram Charger, Grand Cherokee, Chevrolet Suburban, and Lincoln Continental. Amado Carrillo even financed the construction of the village church.His mansion in Hermosillo, Sonora, dubbed “The Palace of a Thousand and One Nights” still sits unoccupied. In 2006, Gov. Eduardo Bours asked the federal government to tear it down.
3 ) Osiel Cárdenas Guillén
Osiel Cárdenas Guillén (born May 18, 1967 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas) is a Mexican drug lord who is the symbolic leader of the Gulf Cartel. Originally a mechanic in Matamoros, he entered the Gulf Cartel by helping Juan García Abrego, the capo at the time; when García was arrested in 1995, some infighting erupted within the cartel. Cárdenas was captured by the Mexican Army in a battle with Gulf Cartel gunmen on March 14, 2003 in Matamoros. In 1999, in Matamoros, he allegedly threatened to kill two U.S. federal agents who were transporting a Gulf Cartel informant through Matamoros. Cárdenas and more than a dozen of his men surrounded the agents’ car near downtown. After a tense standoff, the agents were able to talk their way out of being killed by reminding Cárdenas that the U.S. would hunt him for the rest of his life. After the incident, the Federal Bureau of Investigation offered a $2 million bounty for Cárdenas’ arrest.
4 ) Joaquín Guzmán Loera
Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord escaped prison by hiding in a laundry truck nearly a decade ago, and his legend and fortune seem to grow with each passing day he eludes capture. Now he has reached a new level of fame – or infamy – by making Forbes magazine’s list of the 67 “World’s Most Powerful People.” Guzmán’s rivalries and turf wars have contributed to a drug-war death toll that stands at 11,000 in the past two and a half years, an average of 366 murders per month.
His feuds stretch back more than two decades, leaving a trail of tombstones that act as milestones of the narcotics business south of the border. Part Al Capone and part Jesse James, Mr. Guzmán has become a narco folk hero. He is feted on YouTube videos and by musicians who pen ballads, known as corridos, in his honor. He is known throughout Mexico simply as “El Chapo,” Mexican slang for a short and stocky man.
5 ) Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela
Gilberto José Rodríguez Orejuela is a Colombian druglord, formerly one of the leaders of the Cali Cartel, based in the city of Cali. He earned his nickname, the Chess Player, for his ability to stay ahead of his rivals and outwit the authorities. But his luck ran out in 1995, when police swooped on his luxury apartment in Cali and reportedly found him crouching in a wardrobe. At the time, extradition was banned in Colombia and Rodriguez Orejuela probably believed he would serve his time and then walk free.
In fact, freedom came earlier than expected when a Colombian judge decided to release him in 2002 for good behaviour. This provoked outrage in Colombia and the authorities re-arrested him four months later on new drug trafficking charges.
6 ) Manuel Noriega
Before Saddam Hussein there was Manuel Noriega. Like Saddam, Noriega enjoyed US support until he turned into a wayward ally, then an embarrassment, and finally an “imminent danger” who had to be overthrown. The 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States removed him from power; he was captured, detained as a prisoner of war, and flown to the United States. Noriega was tried on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering in April 1992. Noriega’s U.S. prison sentence ended in September 2007. Noriega was a career soldier, receiving much of his education at the Military School of Chorrillos in Lima, Peru.
In 1989 the general was overthrown and captured during Operation Nifty Package, as part of the United States invasion of Panama. He was detained as a prisoner of war, and later taken to the United States. Noriega fled during the invasion, and a manhunt ensued. He threatened that he would call for guerilla warfare if the Apostolic Nuncio did not give him refuge. He was discovered to be in the Apostolic Nunciature, the Holy See’s embassy in Panama. Noriega surrendered on January 3, 1990.
7 ) Ismael Zambada García
Ismael Zambada García, also known as El Mayo Zambada, is a Mexican drug lord heading the Sinaloa cartel, responsible for trafficking cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine across the U.S.-Mexican border. Zambada is known to head the Sinaloa cartel in partnership with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. A former farmer with extensive agricultural and botanical knowledge, Zambada has worked to increase his gang’s production of heroin while consolidating his position as a trafficker of Colombian cocaine.
The Zambada-Garcia Organization receives multi-ton quantities of cocaine, via maritime means from Colombian sources of supply. After receipt of the cocaine, the Zambada-Garcia Organization uses a variety of methods, including airplanes, trucks, and cars to transport the cocaine to the United State-Mexico border. Members of the Zambada-Garcia Organization smuggle the cocaine to distribution cells, including major cells in Arizona, California, Chicago, and New York.
8 ) Klaas Bruinsma
Klaas Bruinsma would become known as the first Dutch Godfather. His organization would be the first organized and extreme violent group in Holland. He was feared throughout the land and banned or wanted from most countries for his role in numerous drug shipments. He made millions shipping 1000s of kilo’s through Europe. But like most flamboyant criminals, Klaas Bruinsma too would fall. When Bruinsma got out of prison he decided that as a professional criminal it would be better to check into a hotel instead of having a steady home. Bruinsma and his bodyguards at first spend a lot of time in the Okura Hotel, but after the hotel direction started asking Bruinsma to change his behaviour, he would come down into the lobby, bare footed and wearing only his robe surrounded by 8 to 10 bodyguards dressed in designer suits and talking through walky talkies, he left. After checking out of the Okura Bruinsma made the prestigious Amsterdam Amstel Hotel his home.
He would stay in the suite next to the Royal suite which was for foreign kings or presidents. When these people would come down Bruinsma would stay at another hotel so his bodyguards wouldn’t get into arguments with the bodyguards of the important/royal guests. Bruinsma also beefed up his security. Bruinsma didn’t have a will; his brothers and sisters didn’t accept anything of his inheritance, so most of it went to his mother. The sail boat ‘t Amsterdammertje was confiscated by the Dutch revenue service. His associate Klepper was murdered in 2000; Mieremet survived an assassination attempt in 2002 and was murdered in 2005.
9 ) Frank Lucas
Frank Lucas (born September 9, 1930) is an American former heroin dealer and organized crime boss who operated in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was particularly known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in the Golden Triangle. Lucas boasted that he smuggled heroin using the coffins of dead American servicemen, but this claim is denied by his South East Asian associate, Leslie “Ike” Atkinson. His career was dramatized in the 2007 feature film American Gangster. Lucas’s character is portrayed by Denzel Washington. In January 1975, Lucas’ house in Teaneck, New Jersey was raided by a task force consisting of 10 agents from Group 22 of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and 10 New York Police Department detectives attached to the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB). In his house authorities found $584,683.
He was later convicted of both federal and New Jersey state drug violations. The following year he was sentenced to 70 years in prison. Once convicted, Lucas provided evidence that led to more than 100 further drug-related convictions. For his safety in 1977, Lucas and his family were placed in the witness protection program. In 1981, after 5 years in custody, his 40-year Federal term and 30-year state term were reduced to time served plus lifetime parole.
10 ) Zhenli Ye Gon
Zhenli Ye Gon born January 31, 1963, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China is a Mexican businessman of Chinese origin accused of trafficking pseudoephedrine or ephedrine precursor chemicals into Mexico from Asia. He is the legal representative of Unimed Pharm Chem México. He is claimed to be a member of the Sinaloa Cartel, a charge that Mr. Ye Gon, who has no previous criminal record, has denied.
He became a citizen of Mexico in 2002. In March 2007, the Mexican government entered Mr. Ye Gon’s home and seized millions of dollars in cash. In an interview with the news agency AP, Mr. Ye Gon explained he agreed to keep the money in his home after his life, as well as those of his family, were threatened by members of Mexico’s PAN party.
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