'Britain's Pablo Escobar' who juggled job as bus driver breaks silence on £1bn drug empire

An immigrant drugs baron dubbed a 'budget Pablo Escobar' worked as a London bus driver as he flooded the UK streets with a £1billion worth of cocaine. Colombian ex-asylum seeker Jesus Ruiz Henao, now 63, was eventually brought to justice and jailed for 19 years in 2006 after more than 100 Met Police officers worked to unravel his network of crime.

Now almost 25 years later a new documentary on Discovery +, The Bus Driver: Britain's Cocaine King, aired on Monday August 11 will see Ruiz-Henao reveal his side of the story.

Ruiz-Henao, who is facing extradition to the US, was at the centre of two police investigations before his ruthless drug trafficking was finally exposed.

He told the documentary: "My life story is a lot like Hollywood movie. I was doing the drug trafficking for over 10 years and I was arrested and sentenced for over a billion pounds of cocaine. I was like a pioneer of the cocaine in the UK."

The drug dealer was finally arrested following a four-year investigation by the National Crime Squad and the Metropolitan Police. As a result of his working-class job driving a bus, Ruiz-Henao earned the title of 'Budget Pablo Escobar' because of his Colombian nationality and trade being a smaller version of the infamous drug cartel run by Escobar in his native Colombia.

Ruiz-Henao even claims to have met the notorious drug lord Escobar on one occasion. He told the film crew: "My first bicycle in my life, I get it from the hands of Pablo Escobar.

"I was thinking he has the power, he has the money. I want to be powerful like them. I want to have everything."

At the time of his arrest detectives said as many as 20,000 people may have worked for the cartel receiving money in Colombia, wire transferred back in payments of £500, or taken by couriers carrying notes swallowed in condoms.

The linked investigations led to 60 arrests and the seizure of £3.5m in cash, as well as the half-tonne of cocaine, and a tonne and a half of cannabis, the BBC reported.

Speaking about Ruiz-Henao's affable exterior as a bus driver, former Detective Sergeant Ian Floyd told The Sun: "He's a manipulator. He uses people. And the threat of violence doesn't have to be direct. It can be inherent. It can be perceived.

"Although he's very softly spoken, not outwardly violent, there's always that level behind him where people will perceive a threat, even if it's not overt."

The Bus Driver: Britain's Cocaine King, streaming exclusively on discovery+ from August 11th