I always take an interest in the Fortune 100’s richest people and all the other lists that come out, showing who is the Alpha male of the world’s richest (well i don’t think any women are in the list, are there ) ? As my other post showed below Bill Gates has been taken out of the number one spot by a Mexican poncho wearer.
What I want to know is there an alternative list including the mafia bosses ,drug cartel bosses, and despot dictators ? (yeah we heard enough Bush/Cheeney bashing already so not those two).
Some of these dictators and drug barons must be high on the list ? Pablo Escobar in his day must of given Bill Gates a run for his money, or Noriega, or John gotti etc etc. How about Saddam Hussein? What about now, the leader of Burma must be rolling in cash ? As are the Mexian mafia.
Is there such a list that estimates the wealth of everyone including despots drug barons and arms dealers ? It would be interesting to know ? But I guess impossible to estimate ? A kind of Fortune underground 100!
Sure. Wait 20 years and read the list. A lot of the current crop of ill-gotten gains will have been legitimized by then.
If you read today’s list (not the top 100, but the top 1000… ill-gotten gains are retained more often than increased), and you’ll likely find the names of a lot of people whose parents or grandparents made a mint in nefarious ways.
Funny thing: in Montreal, the business schools of the two major universities are named for men who made their fortunes selling booze, often exported to the US on riverboats in the dark. And one of those schools is named for a man who made a fortune from the slave trade. But, hey, that was then, this is now, and their names are pretty prestigious.
I seriously doubt any of the drug/political baddies will come very close to the legit moguls, but its a darn good question.[/quote]
Yeah I think I agree with you cowboy. Most of the Cocaine barrens seem to be in the hundreds of millions rather than billions. I guess from what I have read Pablo Escobar (the daddy of all drug barons) was around 500 million dollars.
(but who knows!)
Many people say drug money and crime money is easy money but it goes to show that crime doesn’t really pay as well as great innovation. Escobar and Hussein are both dead and never made the same money as Buffet, Gates or the Mexican new dude on the block.
Jaboney makes a good point though. For example it is widely known in two of the UK’s ethnic minority groups in Southall London (Pakistani and Indian), that many of the big legit businessmen of that group originally got their starter money from heroin importation.
And talking of history well the British East India company is a good example.
Oh and Jaboney please name the “respectable” accused Canadians. That would be more fun! Or were you waiting to be asked ? As I truthully don’t know anything about Canadian organized crime, except they have a lot of nasty Hells Angels.
Educate me on these underworld figures that became respectable Canadians.
Hey, I went to school with a descendant of Matheson! He looked into the family history, then spent a couple of years volunteering in a Hong Kong clinic for heroin addicts to atone for the family’s past.
fenlander:
James McGill made a good chunk of change on the slave trade, and when he died gave his money and property to establish Canada’s first medical school, which grew into McGill University.
The Broffman Business Building at McGill is named for Samuel Bronfman, who founded Distillers Corporation, which was later better known as Seagram’s. Made a mint selling whiskey, often to Chicago rum runners, but was good enough to make sure that he was selling good stuff, while others sometimes killed or blinded their customers with bad hooch.
The Concordia business school is the John Molson School of Business. John made his money brewing, banking, running a shipping line and Canada’s first railway. Being in government helped too. Like Sam Bronfman, he managed to stay on the right side of the law while finding creative economic opportunities.
My uncle spent 40 years working for Canada’s biggest trucking outfit, and knows all about organized crime in eastern Canada: pointed out some of the bosses’ homes while driving around one day. Armed men in gate houses! I couldn’t believe it. I was lucky enough to spend four years in a free apartment in Westmount, maybe the wealthiest square mile in the county. In addition to a couple of former prime ministers, the current premier, and industrialists, there were a surprising number of people in the neighbourhood who had bought homes with drug money.
So it goes.
[quote=“Jaboney”]fenlander:
James McGill made a good chunk of change on the slave trade, and when he died gave his money and property to establish Canada’s first medical school, which grew into McGill University.
The Broffman Business Building at McGill is named for Samuel Bronfman, who founded Distillers Corporation, which was later better known as Seagram’s. Made a mint selling whiskey, often to Chicago rum runners, but was good enough to make sure that he was selling good stuff, while others sometimes killed or blinded their customers with bad hooch.
The Concordia business school is the John Molson School of Business. John made his money brewing, banking, running a shipping line and Canada’s first railway. Being in government helped too. Like Sam Bronfman, he managed to stay on the right side of the law while finding creative economic opportunities.
My uncle spent 40 years working for Canada’s biggest trucking outfit, and knows all about organized crime in eastern Canada: pointed out some of the bosses’ homes while driving around one day. Armed men in gate houses! I couldn’t believe it. I was lucky enough to spend four years in a free apartment in Westmount, maybe the wealthiest square mile in the county. In addition to a couple of former prime ministers, the current premier, and industrialists, there were a surprising number of people in the neighbourhood who had bought homes with drug money.
So it goes.[/quote]
Thanks. Yes I heard there is a lot of organized crime in Canada, just doesn’t tend to get the exposure that the American gangs do. Hollywood I guess.
[quote=“fenlander”]I always take an interest in the Fortune 100’s richest people and all the other lists that come out, showing who is the Alpha male of the world’s richest (well I don’t think any women are in the list, are there ) ? As my other post showed below Bill Gates has been taken out of the number one spot by a Mexican poncho wearer.
What I want to know is there an alternative list including the mafia bosses ,drug cartel bosses, and despot dictators ?
[/quote]
Fortune magazine doesn’t care how the people got their money. If a drug lord is rich enough, he’ll be listed. At least this used to be true - maybe they changed their policy. I know it used to be true because Escobar was on the list at one time. Some dictators are still on - for example, the Sultan of Brunei.
The year Escobar was on, the editors said they would only exclude someone who, while rich, was only nominally in control of his or her money - ie., could not actually sell off possessions or do whatever he or she wanted with it. For example: most European kings and queens. Queen Elizabeth can’t actually decide to sell Buckingham Palace, for example, so her wealth is considered to be the country’s wealth, not exclusively hers.
There’s such a list, but complied for journalistic/government purposes. [/quote]
Do these people ever get on the travel and living show? I’d like to look at their houses and particularly their security systems. I bet they have a nice line is swimming pools. Would be interesting to take a look. I wonder if “travel and living” would be interested.
With a fortune of exceeding 1 billion, it also could play a role that this amount of money is more and more difficult to hide, with the public getting attention and, if the money is illegal, a trend towards stopping the crimes…
Interesting. I guess the underworld accountant is in high demand. That is of course why most of these people go legitimate, not because they can’t make more money being iligit but because they can’t hide it anymore.
The world is becoming smaller and smaller and nearly everything we do is checked and double checked. Even to wire small amounts of money out of England after 9/11 they ask on the form what the money is for etc. Wow isn’t that my business and not their’s ? The gypsies in England have got it right as their main currecny is Gold and horses lol
IF more people switched back to gold that would really mess everything up!
Or were you waiting to be asked ? As I truthully don’t know anything about Canadian organized crime, except they have a lot of nasty Hells Angels.
