Foreign Property News | Posted by Zarni Kyaw
Mexico is auctioning off six houses once owned by jailed drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman — complete with reinforced metal gates and escape tunnels into Culiacan’s sewer system.
Among the properties on the block is the two-story house in the Guadalupe neighborhood that served as Guzman’s headquarters for his Sinaloa cartel and includes a tunnel beneath the bathtub, the Mexican news agency Milenio reported.
Bidding on the notorious drug lord’s home office on Calle Rio Humaya is due to start at $107,349.
In all, the six homes are expected to fetch a minimum of 19.5 million pesos — the equivalent of $1 million — when they go to auction Nov. 10.
Proceeds will be used to buy musical instruments for school children in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, Ricardo Rodriguez Vargas, who is overseeing the government’s auction, told Milenio.
The homes were seized by the Mexican government after Guzman was arrested and extradited to the US.
He was sentenced to life in prison in February and is serving his time in supermax prison in Colorado.
Guzman, who headed the lucrative cartel for decades and established it as one of the region’s most violent, had a penchant for using tunnels to smuggle the drugs across the border.
In 2015, he also escaped from a Mexican prison by tunneling out through a shower stall.
US authorities have now focused on Guzman’s sons, who have taken his place in the cartel.
Recently released video shows the botched Oct. 17 raid by Mexican National Guard troops, who took Ovidio Guzman into custody only to release him hours later as cartel gunmen launched on all-out assault on the solders and the city.
Ref: Property Report
