The price Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán paid to escape from a high-security prison seems to have been pocket change for the Sinaloa cartel boss. At the helm of the highly lucrative set-up estimated to exceed $1 billion, he reportedly paid $3 million to escape from another maximum-security prison in 2001.

His most recent prison break, through a custom-built, mile-long tunnel equipped with ventilation, lighting and a motorcycle built on rails — and with an exit disguised by an unfinished home – is estimated to have cost Guzmán $50 million, when bribes to prison employees and government officials are included, according to Pablo Escobar&’s top hit man, Jhon Jairo Velasquez Vasquez.

As with all drug-related finances, the true value of Guzmán&’s escape has not been quantified or verified. “Listen, it&’s a black market for these things,” Walter Lopez, president of the College of Civil Engineers in Sinaloa, told The New York Times in reference to the cost of the escape. “Getting it exact is impossible,” he said.

According to Excelsior, the Mexican attorney general&’s office sourced $123,800 in payments related to the escape. Federal investigators provided Mexican legislators with the following figures (according to Excelsior:

$24,320 0for the construction of the house the tunnel led to;

$91,200 for the plot of land on which the house was built; and

$10,340 paid to a pilot who flew Guzmán after the escape (the amount paid to another pilot who flew a decoy plane is unknown).

El Economista reported the same payments as Excelsior, with the addition of a $10,340 payment given to the owners of an airstrip in San Juan del Río in Querétaro, where Guzmán&’s plane taxied before flying to Sinaloa.

El Economista&’s report put the total cost for these elements of the escape at about $133,900. It also noted that the price of machinery and labour for Guzmán&’s tunnel had not been quantified, nor had the details reported by El Economista and Excelsior been verified.

A Mexican businessman named Manuel Trillo Hernández has been arrested, and Mexican authorities have accused him of financing the escape. Hernández was arrested on 19 August in Puebla state in central Mexico and then held so he could be investigated for his suspected connection to the escape. Investigators say he “presumably financed the escape” of the Sinaloa cartel chief and is also accused of using false identities and shell companies to purchase goods for the cartel from 2012 to 2015.

An owner of restaurants and exchange houses and, allegedly, an old friend of Guzmán, Hernández has since been locked in the very same prison Guzmán broke out of. Also arrested in late October was Oscar Manuel Gomez, who is believed to be the “mastermind” of the escape and reportedly managed the payments described above.

The investigators also linked Gomez to several high-profile figures in the drug underworld. According to Excelsior&’s report, he worked with Vicente Zambada Niebla, a relative of Adelmo Niebla González, known as El G-3, a lieutenant in the Sinaloa cartel who tunnelled out of a Mexican prison just 14 months before Guzmán did the same.

Gomez has previously worked for Eduardo Arellano Felix, the Tijuana cartel boss who warred with the Sinaloa clan before being arrested in 2008 and extradited to the USA. Gomez also worked for several Sinaloa network figures related to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who, along with Guzmán, helped make the Sinaloa cartel the most powerful in the western hemisphere.

“El Mayo”, who directs Sinaloa&’s operations in Colombia, is regarded as “one of the most storied traffickers in Mexico”.