Who wants to win the hideout of “El Chapo”?

His tub concealed a tunnel. The house had allowed the most famous Mexican drug trafficker, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, to escape the army, before being arrested in Mexico, then sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 in the United States. The Mexican lottery brings into play, Wednesday, September 15, this astonishing hideout. The other lots, worth a total of 10 million euros, were also confiscated from drug lords as part of a dirty money program aimed at funding social programs.

Article reserved for our subscribers Read also The godfather of drugs El Chapo found guilty, a victory for American justice

For this draw, organized on the occasion of the National Day, 2 million lottery tickets were put on sale at the unit price of 250 pesos (10 euros). The hideout of the former Sinaloa cartel leader, located in the eponymous state (north-west), is estimated at only 155,000 euros with its two bedrooms and its tiny garden. The other lots are much more spectacular. At the head, a house of 3,000 m2, which belonged to Amado Carrillo Fuentes, alias “el Señor de los Cielos”, the former head of the Juarez cartel who died in 1997 during a cosmetic surgery operation. Nine rooms, swimming pool, Jacuzzi, party room… Its value exceeds 3 million euros.

A customer indicates the lottery ticket he wants to buy, in an attempt to win one of the drug lords' possessions, put into play by the Mexican government, in Mexico City, September 13, 2021.

Ingenious mechanism

But the media and Internet users have their eyes riveted on the relic of the mafia exploits of “El Chapo”. The soldiers had fought, in February 2014, to break down the steel doors of his hideout. The time for him to activate the ingenious mechanism which raised the bathtub, freeing a passage which connected seven houses between them.

Priced three times, the hideout of “El Chapo” has never found buyers, undoubtedly worried about the risk of reprisals

The one nicknamed the “king of the tunnels” will be arrested shortly after. El Chapo will escape from prison, a year later, thanks to another tunnel. Detained again in 2016, he will finally be extradited to the United States, where he is serving his sentence.

Seized by the prosecution, the house belongs to the Independent, acronym of the Instituto para devolver al pueblo lo robado (“Institute to return stolen goods to the people”). An evocative name for an expropriation program created at the end of 2018 by the center-left president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (“AMLO”), determined to tackle the jackpot of “narcos”.

The Independent thus owns villas, cars, jewelry, yachts and private jets, valued at more than 20 million euros. The institute organizes auctions, the earnings of which are used for scholarships and pensions in a country where nearly half of the population is poor.

You have 22.1% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.