The photos wouldn't be out place in a Craigslist ad: "Three-room suite features tiled walls, plush chairs, flat-screen TV and plenty of storage. With a conference room and a cozy living room, it's perfect for both work and relaxation. Treadmill included!"
Except it's not an apartment: It's a three-room cell at the crowded Tacumbu prison in Asuncion, Paraguay.
Brazilian drug trafficker Jarvis Chimenes Pavao was serving an eight-year sentence for money laundering at the prison, Agence France-Presse reports. After police found a bomb inside the prison, they investigated reports that Chimenes Pavao was planning to escape — and discovered his cozy setup.
He had air conditioning, a refrigerator, a library and a DVD collection ... including the full Pablo EscobarTV miniseries.
Chimenes Pavao had bribed multiple prison directors and justice ministers to allow him to deck out his prison quarters, his lawyer says, according to AFP.
You can read the news agency's full coverage of the scandal over at Yahoo News.
The druglord has now been transferred out of his posh dwellings, AFP writes:
"Among the 3,500 inmates at Tacumbu — double its capacity — many already say they miss him.
" 'I don't know what's going to become of us without him,' said a fellow prisoner, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"He said Chimenes Pavao was a generous benefactor who paid for a football pitch and chapel at the prison, as well as employing bodyguards among the inmates."
Most of the inmates at the overcrowded prison "eat only irregularly and sleep on cardboard boxes or directly on the floor," AFP reports.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
