Latin America Places 22 on Latest Billionaires List : Wealth: That’s up from just eight last year. U.S. still has the greatest number, with 101.

Latin America, once a sinkhole of Third World debt, has emerged as the world’s leading breeding ground for billionaires, Forbes magazine said Monday.

A surge of private enterprise and foreign investment has nearly tripled the number of Latin American fortunes on the magazine’s annual billionaires list from eight last year to 22, the magazine said.

Despite ailing economies, Japan still is home to the world’s wealthiest people, and the United States still has the greatest number of billionaires on the list with 101.

But the big story is Latin America, where a spree of fortunes were made in a region that only a few years ago symbolized intractable debt, deprivation and war, and the biggest single export was illicit drugs. Most of the region’s population remains poor by U.S. standards.

“There is nothing sinister about all of this,” Forbes says in its July 20 issue. “Economic growth requires large-scale undertakings, and the people who most successfully organize these undertakings inevitably accumulate wealth.”

Forbes said the biggest Latin fortune is the $3.8 billion accumulated by Mexico’s Garza-Sada family. It controls businesses ranging from a steel-petrochemical complex to breweries that make Dos Equis and Tecate beer.

Illicit drugs still play an important role in Latin wealth. Two of the three Colombian entries on the Forbes list are “narco-billionaires,” running their empires from prison.

Forbes said Pablo Escobar Gaviria, a founder of the Medellin drug cartel, is worth an estimated $2 billion, while the three Ochoa brothers, also Medellin founders, are managing $2 billion culled from the cocaine trade.

The only legitimate Colombian entry Forbes found was Julio Mario Santo Domingo, owner of the Bavaria brewery and Avianca Airlines. He’s worth $1 billion.

The richest person on the Forbes list continued to be Japan’s Taikichiro Mori, 88, a former economics professor who made his fortune in real estate.

Forbes said Mori has a portfolio worth about $13 billion, down from $15 billion last year because of plummeting property values.

Forbes said the richest single American is Bill Gates, the 34-year-old Harvard dropout who founded Microsoft Corp., the world’s leading maker of computer software. His net worth was pegged at $6.4 billion.

Billionaires Around the World A surge of private enterprise and foreign investment has nearly tripled the number of Latin Aemrican fortunes on Forbes magazine’s annual billionaires list to 21, versus eight in 1991. However, despite faltering economics, the United States has the greatest number of billionaires, 101 and Japan is home to the world’s wealthiest individuals. Billionaires Around the World

Country Number of billionaires United States 101 Germany 44 Japan 34 Canada 10 France 9 Hong Kong 8 Mexico 8 Switzerland 7 Italy 6 Saudi Arabia 6 Taiwan 6 Brazil 5 United Kingdom 5 Chile 3 Colombia 3 Greece 3 Korea 3 Spain 3 Sweden 3 Thailand 3

The World’s Richest People

Fortune Name Country (in billions) Walton family USA $23.8 Taikichiro Mori Japan 13 Yoshiaki Tsutsumi Japan 10+ DuPont family USA 8.6 Mars family USA 8 Hans and Gad Rausing Sweden 7 Erivan Haub Germany 6.9 Bill Gates USA 6.4 Haniel family Germany 6.4 Kenneth Roy Thomson Canada 6.2+

Source: Forbes magazine