He was once the accountant for one of the most infamous drug cartels in history. But Roberto Escobar, brother of Pablo Escobar, the most successful cocaine dealer in history, insists his life's purpose now is to develop a cure for Aids.
His interest in the disease is just one of a litany of bizarre disclosures he makes in Escobar, a book that - with the help of writer David Fisher and translator Tito Dominguez - tells the inside story of Pablo and the Medellin drug cartel. At the height of his powers in 1989, Pablo was listed by Forbes magazine as the world's seventh-richest man, with earnings of US$9 billion a year. Back then Roberto kept racehorses.
Speaking in Spanish, with his Miami-based friend and former Medellin cartel operative Dominguez translating, Roberto explains that when his beloved US$3 million Paso Fino - abducted and castrated by rivals - succumbed to equine anaemia, a sickness that closely parallels Aids, he 'began working closely with veterinarians and chemists and became more and more involved'.
When the brothers gave themselves up to Colombian authorities in 1991, they not only built their own luxury prison, La Catedral, complete with jacuzzis, a football pitch, two chefs and a bar stocked with the finest spirits, they also created a laboratory for Roberto's research.
As with many of Roberto's revelations, those concerning the life the brothers led inside La Catedral until their 1992 escape would strain all credibility if so many of them were not on record. But then, the entire Escobar story reads like a surreal rags to riches fable. Or, as Roberto puts it in his book: 'Our lives were like a dream, then we lived in a nightmare.'
Roberto spent 15 years keeping track of Pablo's billions, investing and devising methods of storing the cash. Eventually forced on the run with Pablo, he handed himself over to Colombian authorities for the second time in 1992 and was placed in a maximum-security prison until his release in 2004.