Kiwi banker reveals his part in Mexico's drug war

Published: 10:11PM Monday January 17, 2011 Source: ONE New

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  Keith Bulfin - Source: Close Up

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  • Kiwi banker's stories of drug cartels and executions (6:02)

A Kiwi-born banker has revealed chilling details of his undercover life working for vicious South American drug cartels, including watching a hit squad execute and dismember a group of people in front of him.

Keith Bulfin grew up in the small Otago gold-rush town of Lawrence. But years later he found himself working in Mexico City at the front end of the war on drugs.

He claims he was approached by the US Drug Enforcement Agency after striking up friendships with Mexican cartel bankers while in jail for conspiring to defraud.

"They moved me from a prison farm into a supermax unit and it was in that unit that I met two fugitive bankers from Mexico," he told Close Up tonight.

"So I befriended them because we had a similar background and little did I know that that would actually lead to my recruitment by the Drug Enforcement Administration."

Bulfin says within weeks he was sitting in front of the DEA attaches from the US Embassy in Canberra.

"I said to them at the time, 'do I have a choice?' and it was put to me that I really did not have a choice and it was painted to me quite clearly that I was a key to a lock."

Behind that lock, says Bulfin, was a door into the financial operations of Mexico's drug cartels, something which the DEA had not been able to penetrate.

But his cover was soon blown, and Bulfin found himself in a warehouse watching the execution of nine people.From there, Bulfin masqueraded as a banker, setting up an investment bank in San Diego that would hold the cartels' money, while reporting back to the DEA.

"I was there to finalise my deal with the Colombians to try and get my life back, by giving their money back. When I arrived in the warehouse, I was frightened, I was perspiring, and all of a sudden they said they had some entertainment. And it didn't dawn on me what was going to occur until we get down into the basement of the warehouse and you've got these people lined up."

He was forced to watch the captives get shot in the side of their heads, then dismembered with chainsaws.

But despite that, he says he has no qualms about revealing all the gruesome details in his book, Undercover.

"The people that I dealt with are either dead or in prison and those ones that are still alive, I've never betrayed. It's like an insurance package for me in the sense that if I stay alive, their operations will continue."

While his book is called a novel, he says about 90% of it is true.

"The things in the book that aren't true are the places and the people, I've changed their names. I had to do that in order to protect those that are still living in Mexico and the United States."

But he says he has the tapes of his meetings with the cartels to prove his story true.