Jesus Ruiz-Henao is known as “Britain’s Pablo Escobar”. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the Colombian-born crime overlord commanded the largest drugs ring in the UK, flooding our streets with more than £1billion worth of cocaine.
During that time, consumption of the drug in this country quadrupled. In fact, apart from the US, Britain now takes more of it than any other nation in the world – and Jesus is the crime boss behind this cocaine explosion. His audacious run came to an end in 2006 when he was sentenced to 19 years in jail for conspiracy to supply drugs and money laundering.
At the height of his criminal activities he ran a 50-strong gang, with an estimated 20,000 operatives laundering money for him in Colombia.
He now lies in an US penitentiary after extradition from Colombia, awaiting a further drugs trial.
But how on earth did Jesus become the biggest drug trafficker in UK history and get away with his gargantuan criminal enterprise for so long?
The answer is he had the perfect cover. He was a TfL bus driver in Hendon, north London. Unassumingly plying his trade on route 134, he was hiding in plain sight.
Now, as the former drugs baron gives his first television interview in new documentary The Bus Driver: Britain’s Cocaine King, two of the police officers responsible for bringing Jesus to justice have spoken to the Sunday Express about their five-year quest to apprehend him.
Former Detective Sergeant Ian Floyd and former DS Steve Lear, both now retired from the force, were part of the largest ever British police operation (outside of terrorist investigations) to snare Jesus.
Five surveillance teams and more than a hundred officers were involved.
“He deliberately tried not to attract attention, he wasn’t flash,” says Ian.
“He wasn’t up there in your face, which is what a lot of drug dealers are.”
To keep his lucrative operation under the radar, Jesus eschewed a glitzy luxury car in favour of a decidedly unglamorous Honda Civic. Aside from driving buses he also worked as a cleaner and a dishwasher.
Speaking from his high-security cell in Bogota, Colombia, before his recent move to the US, Jesus says he had to keep his “day job” as a drugs kingpin concealed.
“I wanted to be invisible,” he says. “Most of the people were arrested because someone close to them grassed them up.
“I had to keep it secret because it is not just the police – criminals everywhere in the world want to take the money from you.”
One of 10 siblings, he grew up in rural poverty in a house with no electricity in the remote mountains of Colombia.
The turning point in his life came when he visited the city of Medellin one Christmas, then under the control of drug cartels.
Escobar, who was very much a demigod to the local people, was handing out presents to poor children and gave the young Jesus a bicycle.
“It was the first bicycle I’d had in my life, and I got it from Pablo Escobar,” remembers the 63-year-old.
“I thought, ‘He has the power, the money. I want to be powerful like that. I want to have everything’.”
Deciding to emulate his childhood hero, he travelled to Sicily in 1982 to convince the Mafia to let him traffic cocaine for them.
After he lost some drugs and wound up owing the Colombian cartels money, they hired a hitman to kill him.
He was shot in the stomach with a machine gun, but miraculously survived.
“I realised if I didn’t move to the UK, I was already dead,” he says.
He arrived in London in 1986 and took up bus driving. But enticed by bigger financial rewards, he eventually returned to his drug-dealing roots.
“You become greedy, you want more because it’s easy money,” he confesses now.
“You say, ‘It’s too easy to get £1million. If it’s that easy to get £1million, now I want to get £10million.’”
Always keeping a low profile, Jesus would explain away his extreme wealth to relatives by saying he had won a fortune in a “Spot the Ball” competition.
By the early 2000s he was working for the ruthless Norte del Valle cartel, who were so ridiculously wealthy they had their own fleet of submarines.
He made a daily profit of £4million and owned five “stash houses” in the UK. At his central London flat in Russell Square he held £42million in cash at one point. The pile of banknotes was 1.5m high.
Jesus devised ever more ingenious ways of smuggling cocaine into the UK, dissolving it into the plastic of suitcases to avoid detection. He also chomped on chewing gum or ate ice cream if passing on potentially incriminating information. Increasingly arrogant, he believed himself untouchable by the police. “I was thinking, ‘They’ve never stopped me’,” he recalls.
“I was a boy from the mountains of Colombia with no proper education, but I was cleverer than them.”
But by 2002 the Met was very much onto him. He blundered after admitting to his chief money-launderer, Fernando Carranza Reyes, then unaware, that he was in fact the drug kingpin of their illicit operation.
Jesus now calls it, “my biggest mistake”.
Fernando was arrested in September 2003 as part of a massive police swoop on the drugs ring.
He had tens of thousands of pounds in his safe at La Gran Colombia, Jesus’s money transfer office in north London.
Officers also seized thousands of payslips which showed Jesus had laundered at least £17million through that office in a single year. Overall, £3.5million in cash and 645kg of cocaine were recovered.
Fernando then turned supergrass, providing evidence which helped convict Jesus and 33 co-conspirators. The money launderer is now in witness protection.
Steve observes: “Jesus was good but he was unlucky that he came up against us.”
Ian adds: “He was a manipulator. Every-one in his position does what they do for their own benefit. If he’s trying to portray himself now as the affable, nice drug dealer, there is a far greater story behind that.
“He might not have been that violent drug dealer, but he was just as much a criminal – he used people for his own ends.”
Two of Jesus’s brothers died as a consequence of his criminal activities.
“He’s very selfish,” continues Ian. “He didn’t really care about other people. Self-preservation is the business here.
“There are victims right the way through this drug-trafficking system. It’s not just about the victims who die because of drugs.
“Further down the line, people commit burglaries, street robberies and thefts.
“There is violence between drug gangs. All of this is the result of drug trafficking.”
He shakes his head. “It has a tremendous impact on people’s lives.
“Jesus might say, ‘Oh, well, I’m just supplying a demand,’ but it’s causing great distress to thousands of people.”
At the height of Jesus’ criminal empire – 1996 to 1999 – cocaine-related deaths in the UK increased four-and-a-half times.
Today, the cocaine market in the UK is worth an estimated £4billion a year.
Ron Chepesiuk, author of Jesus’ biography The Real Mr Big, has said: “Britain has a cocaine epidemic. Jesus is largely responsible. He was the real Mr Big.”
What would the police officers say to Jesus if they saw him today? “Was it worth it?” replies Ian. “Yes, you had five years of the good life and spent lots of money.
“But at the end of the day, you’re going to have 20 or 30 years of not seeing your family and you’ve lost your freedom.”
The detectives can certainly be very happy with their highly successful investigation. “I felt great relief and really proud,” says Steve. “This is why you join, right? That’s why you do this job. All that time, all that effort finally gets you somewhere. It was a good feeling.”
He is hopeful viewers will learn something from watching the documentary.
“I showed it to my sons aged 13 and 17 – at the end, one said, ‘It’s not worth it’.
“Since 2003 Jesus has been in prison. It’s now 2025 and he’s probably not going to get out because he’s in America now. It’s not a victimless crime.
“So if you can show people that this is actually not worth it, then that’s great.”
Ian nods in agreement: “I hope people see it doesn’t matter how big you are, law enforcement will come after you and hopefully will be successful.” Even if you’ve got your own submarine? “Yes, even then!”
Jesus certainly regrets what he did.
Looking back on his lucrative but destructive career he reflects in the documentary: “I’m not proud. At the end of the day, I’m a loser like many people who go into this business.” Given the same chance, he says he would make a different choice.
“Washing up in a restaurant or playing Mr Big again? I’d choose washing up.”
He doesn’t mention the bus driving.
● The Bus Driver: Britain’s Cocaine King is streaming on Discovery+ now
