Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" will appear in a New York City courtroom for a hearing on Friday, local time.  But even though authorities have the man they consider to be responsible for a vast cocaine empire, they have yet to find his fortune - not even a penny.

The 59-year-old El Chapo is believed to have accumulated anywhere from US$1 Billion to $14 Billion during his 30 years at the top of the Sinaloa Cartel - so much that Forbes Magazine used to name him in its annual list of the world's richest people.  In 2013, the magazine said it couldn't verify his wealth, although editors might have decided that glorifying drug dealers maybe isn't such a good idea after all and stopped putting him on the list.

Forbes couldn't verify it and prosecutors can't find it because of the world's uncontrolled off-shore economy.  "As of today, US authorities have not found not even one dollar of El Chapo's assets," said Mexican Attorney General Raul Cervantes to the Televisa news network.  "His money hasn't been found because he didn't use the financial system."  That leaves plenty of options, from shell corporations to crypto-currencies to cash houses and other safe havens for ill-gotten gains.

While drug gangs tend to avoid banks because they cannot prove their gains are not ill-gotten, not every banker asks the right questions of its depositors.  Over the past decade, US giants Bank of America, Western Union, and JP Morgan have been implicated in laundering drug money; HSBC has admitted its laundering role, evading criminal prosecution by paying a fine of almost US$2 Billion.