He bought a zoo.
At the height of the cocaine boom in the early ’90s, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was living so large he had four wives, four planes, a yacht, a beach house on every shore — and his own zoo.
The Mexican drug lord’s private menagerie contained tigers, lions, panthers and deer — and Guzman traveled around it “in a little train,” one of his former lieutenants revealed in Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday.
“In the city of Guadalajara, Mr. Guzman had a zoo,” Miguel Angel Martinez, who was one of Guzman’s close pals and a self-described “manager” in the powerful Sinaloa Cartel at the time, told jurors.
“It was a very nice ranch with a house, pool, tennis courts and he built a zoo.”
The anecdote was just the latest stunning example of Guzman’s lavish lifestyle to emerge from his trial in Brooklyn, where he was extradited last year to face charges including running a criminal enterprise, international cocaine distribution and murder conspiracy.
Being part of the booming drug trade at that time was “the best thing in the world,” said Martinez, who worked for Guzman from 1987 to 1995.
The cocaine was so plentiful, and his habit so huge, Martinez admitted, that he had to take a year off from doing coke when his septum perforated from snorting too much. He went back to it after having cartilage replaced in his nose.
Still, the Team Chapo high life wasn’t just about drugs. They flew all over the world to dine at the best restaurants — as well as to Macau for gambling and to Switzerland so that Guzman could get Fountain of Youth-like cell-rejuvenation therapy.
The narco-kingpin carried around a diamond-encrusted pistol, owned a $10 million beach house in Acapulco and a yacht he named “Chapito.”
“He had a beach house on every single beach, ranches everywhere, houses everywhere,” said Martinez.
At one point, Martinez said he was told to buy 50 vehicles — Thunderbirds, Buicks and Cougars, each costing at least $30,000 at the time — to dole out as gifts to members of their cartel.
But Guzman was also paranoid, Martinez revealed.
He wire-tapped “enemies, friends” and even girlfriends — and gave out bugged pens and calculators to his underlings.
The drug baron owned four private planes that he used to ferry around his many “wives” and their children — as well as moving money for his international syndicate.
The cartel would pack $8 million to $10 million in cash into each jet “almost every month,” and fly to Mexico City where the money would be “stashed, placed in bank accounts,” Martinez said.
He recalled depositing up to $10 million every month in the Mexican banking system — carrying the actual dough into banks in Samsonite suitcases.
At the time, the cartel was smuggling some $500 million of Colombian cocaine into the US each year — stuffing the powder into pickled-jalapeno cans.
The process, Martinez said, would leave workers high as a kite as they packed up to 700 six-pound cans with coke at a facility in Mexico City.“They got intoxicated because whenever you would press the kilos, it would release cocaine into the air,” he said.
The La Comadre pepper cans would be filled with a half-kilo of coke and the rest with sand, to meet the proper weight. Trucks would then carry 2,000 to 3,200 cans at a time, he said.
Fifty-five percent of the cut went to the Colombians, while Guzman and his crew received 45 percent for the distribution.
Guzman began employing the unconventional method in the early ’90s after police unearthed the secret underground tunnel his cartel used to get drugs across the border.
That tunnel connected a building in Douglas, Ariz., to a house in Agua Prieta, Mexico — where the entrance was accessible under a pool table that was lifted using hydraulics.
But someone “left the pool table raised and some police officer went by and saw it through the window,” Martinez said.
Guzman was tipped off about the discovery by crooked Mexico City police chief Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni, who Martinez testified on Monday had been paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes from the cartel.
Martinez also recalled in 1987 visiting El Chapo’s then-boss Juan José Esparragoza Moreno in prison, where the guards were paid off to let him run the joint.
When they arrived at the Reclusorio Preventivo Sur prison in Mexico City, there was a live band playing and the visitors wined and dined like kings while being waited on by other inmates, he said.
“There was a music group, and they had everything, whatever you would want to eat. Whiskey, cognac,” Martinez said. “You could choose between lobster and sirloin and pheasant.”
But that visit marked the beginning of the end of the good times for Martinez as El Chapo asked Moreno — known as El Azul — for permission to wage war with the Tijuana Cartel over the death of two close friends.
Moreno said yes, and “a few days later the deaths started,” Martinez said.
Among the battles, he recalled an infamous 1992 attack on the high-end Christine’s nightclub in Puerto Vallarta — revealing for the first time that Guzman was there in person, guns blazing.
He had arrived with 20 to 25 armed men to kill Tijuana Cartel leaders Ben and Ramon Arellano Felix — but the rivals were tipped off, Martinez said.
“Mr. Guzman starts shooting left and right . . . the Arellanos start shooting from inside, outside,” he said.
Two gunmen and four clubgoers were killed, but the cartel bigwigs on both sides survived.
A year later, another epic fire-fight with the Tijuana Cartel finally put a much bigger target on Guzman’s back, when the Arellano Felixes sent gunmen to knock off El Chapo at Guadalajara International Airport.
Guzman pulled up at the airport and opened the trunk to pull out a suitcase stuffed with $600,000 when gunmen opened fire, Martinez recalled.
The drug lord ran in with his bodyguard and the suitcase, dashed through the baggage claim, along the luggage belt, onto the airport’s landing strip and then jumped in a taxi at the other side of the airport and high-tailed it out.
But what Guzman didn’t know is that he had parked right next to the cardinal and archbishop of Guadalajara, Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, who was killed in the initial hail of bullets, Martinez said.
Public outrage over the holy man’s death led to El Chapo’s arrest just a a month later.