New Zealand police declares war on Maltese ‘motorcycle gang boss’ Alex Vella

Alex Vella, 58, is a Maltese citizen who has lived in Australia since age 11 after migrating there with his “strict, Catholic family”.

But this is not the kind of emigrant who earns the worship of TV shows Waltzing Matilda and Baqghu Maltin. Vella is the national president of the Rebels Motorcycle Club, and the New Zealand police says it wants to stop it from planting its roots in the country. 17 members of his gang in New Zealand have nearly 100 convictions for serious drug and violence offences between them, and cumulatively have served 77 years in prison. A further 14 associates got 90 years’ jail time between them.

New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times says Vella’s gang – or “club” as he calls it – is involved in various areas of criminality in Australia and is now trying to get a foothold in major cities around NZ.

“It seems to be a strategic move on the part of the Rebels to have some international expansion, which New Zealand is part of,” Detective Superintendent Brett Kane from the Organised and Financial Crime Agency says.

In Australia, the Rebels are involved in meth, cocaine and cannabis distribution and have been involved in intimidation, extortion, inter-gang violence and murder, Kane says. “We’re watching to see whether it is by gang chapters or individual choice. It's a moving feast really. We’re monitoring the situation very closely – there are a number of potential options that could play out here.”

Vella, a founding member of the Rebels from the 1960s, is described as a mediawise and business-savvy leader. He makes all public statements on behalf of the 2000 members Australia-wide, and in 2008 won a court case against the ANZ Bank, suing it $2.7 million after his former business partner re-mortgaged three properties, including the Rebels' club house, for $2.4 million by falsifying Vella's signature.

Going by some descriptions, he is everything that the caricature of motorcycle gang members suggests in TV shows such as Sons Of Anarchy. In December, his clubhouse for the Rebels' southern headquarters in Seaford was put on sale: it had a video camera security system, high cement-rendered walls, a bar, and a private room with a stripper pole.

Wikipedia’s entry for Vella claims he was born to a family of 11 children and that his parents “lived in a cave with no electricity and a well for a water” – if true, he might have been part of the Mellieha troglodyte community.

“He began work at the age of eight, carrying buckets of water on a building site for 30 cents a day, and is functionally illiterate,” the Wikipedia entry claims. His family later established a strawberry farm in Horsely Park, New South Wales and he later became a boxing champion.

In 1990, police found a $15,000 stash of marijuana while searching his home, earning him 18-months of two-nights-a-week prison, and two-days-a-week community service. He has also been arrested, but not convicted, of a number of other crimes including stabbing two men and assaulting a woman. He was freed on appeal after being given six months’ jail for the latter.

Only this week, Vella was stopped by police on the federal highway near Collector, in a massive random drug, alcohol and compliance check of 100 biker gang members on a memorial ride for a former member shot dead two years ago.

Such is the high security risk of the biker gang, that the Rebels were ‘road managed’ by New South Wales’s specialist anti-bikie unit Strike Force Raptor throughout the memorial ride, the Canberra Times reported.

“At the checkpoint, police issued 20 traffic infringement notices, 10 defect notices, one infringement notice for offensive language, and arrested one rider who failed a drug test. Police also identified a suspended rider, and issued 20 notices for excessive noise.”