other nations became involved. The United States was huge, Mexico was huge, even in Cuba there was some business being done until Fidel Castro found out that some of his colonels and generals were involved and killed three of them.

Only in Canada did the business not take root. Champion tried to open Canada for us, but it didn’t work. Pablo sent Champion and the Lion to Montreal and Toronto to meet some people, but after making these connections they just didn’t sense it was right to go forward. There was no more explanation than that something felt weird. Champion and the Lion had problems with the Canadian police. They didn’t get arrested but they believed the police knew they were there. It was playing with trouble, they decided. Finally they told Pablo, “It’s too risky. We don’t need this.”

Pablo told them to go back to New York.

Canada wasn’t necessary. We were earning hundreds of millions of dollars. In the history of crime there had never been a business like this one. The biggest problem we had with the money was that there was too much of it. It was as difficult to launder the money—make it look as if it had been earned from a legitimate source—or simply transport it home to Colombia as it was to smuggle the drugs into America and Europe. Pablo used so many different methods of cleaning the money. The important thing was there were always people ready to make deals for cash. So in addition to investing in companies, putting it in banks and real estate and allowing it to flow through the money systems of countries like Panama, Pablo bought magnificent art, which included paintings by Picasso, Dali, Botero, and other famous artists, antique furniture, and other very desirable items that could be sold easily for cleaned money with no questions asked.

There were some creative methods that were used with great success. For example, Colombia is the world leader in the mining and exporting of emeralds, supplying as much as 60 percent of the world market. The emerald trade between Colombia and other countries is hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The way this cleaning system worked was that a legitimate buyer in America or particularly Spain would place an order for a few million dollars of Colombian emeralds. It would be a legal contract. But instead of sending real emeralds worth that price, what was shipped were bad emeralds that had been injected with oil to make them shine bright. These emeralds would stay shiny for three months, after that forget it. But only experts can detect when an emerald has been injected. So the emeralds would pass inspection and the legal payment would be sent to Colombia. Millions of dollars were cleared this way.

Laundering money could be very expensive, costing as much as 50 percent or 60 percent of the total value. So there were always people willing to do deals. It wasn’t just Pablo who had to launder money; it was everyone working in this business. We all knew the people who would make deals. Among the groups well known for cleaning money were the Jewish people with the black hats, long curled sideburns, and black coats. One of our pilots used their services regularly—because they only charged 6 percent. They wouldn’t get involved with drugs, so to work with them you had to have a convincing story of where the money came from. “For each transaction,” this pilot explained, “my name was Peterson, his name was made up. He always wore a red carnation; I always wore a red carnation. We’d go to a room I’d reserved under a totally different name. I usually had a few million dollars in cash in a suitcase, which was guarded by two very well armed men. He’d ask, ‘Where are the funds?’ I’d point to the suitcase. I tried to speak as little as possible. He’d pick up the bills and instead of counting them, he’d fan them like a deck of cards. The guy was a human counting machine. Then he’d use the phone and call whoever and say, ‘The transaction is satisfactory. You can go ahead to the next level.’ Then he’d say to me, ‘Five minutes.’

“We’d wait five minutes, then I’d pick up the same phone and ask, ‘Can I tell him to have a nice day?’ He would nod. I’d say that and the transaction was complete. What happened then was that someone in Europe deposited an equal