A Colombian court has ordered the seizure of a property belonging to legendary footballer Rene Higuita after concluding that Pablo Escobar’s cartel money was used to purchase the house.<\/p>\n
Former Colombia international goalkeeper Higuita – famed for his outrageous overhead scorpion kick – acquired the home in an upscale Medellin neighborhood in 1992.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege “manuevers” and forged signatures to “cover up the origin” of the sale, the office told AFP Thursday.<\/p>\n
The deal entailed “successive transfers… until it finally ended up in the name of the former footballer” one year before bloodthirsty drug baron Escobar’s death, it added.<\/p>\n
A 12-year investigation found that a front for brothers and cartel members William and Gerardo Moncada — both later killed in prison under Escobar’s orders – initially acquired the property.<\/p>\n
“It is pure and simple coincidence,” Higuita told Bogota-based Blu Radio, adding that he considers himself a “victim of these events”.<\/p>\n
The Medellin-born goalkeeper has appealed the court decision and is allowed to hold on to the property in the meantime.<\/p>\n
“El Loco” (the madman) first showed off his acrobatic scorpion kick, which entails kicking his legs up behind him to save goals, during a Colombia-England match in 1995.<\/p>\n
Higuita’s run-ins with the drug world have also attracted attention.<\/p>\n
He was arrested after visiting Escobar in prison in 1993, and investigated for mediating the release of a drug trafficker’s daughter who had been kidnapped by the kingpin.<\/p>\n
He received an illegal payment for brokering the deal, but charges against him for doing so were later dropped.<\/p>\n
“From then on they started calling me Pablo Escobar’s friend, and you have no idea how many problems that has caused me,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Colombian court has ordered the seizure of a property belonging to legendary footballer Rene Higuita after concluding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-541753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}