Big bickies at stake in gang turf wars

By Greg Ansley

CANBERRA - Michael Kulakowski's killers were convicted of his murder in Sydney last week.

Kulakowski, president of the Bandidos bikie gang, was gunned down with two other club members in a nightclub by two Rebel gang members for reasons never uncovered.

And in the small New South Wales city of Queanbeyan, just outside the national capital, Canberra, police expressed grave fears for Paul Wheeler, a one-time sergeant-at-arms of the local Rebels chapter.

A few weeks ago a friend dropped him near a pub in the city's main street: he has not been seen since.

Two days previously the beaten body of a Comancheros gang member had been dumped in the street outside his former wife's Sydney home.

Australian police, who held an emergency strategy meeting in Adelaide, fear the killings may be part of a widening gang war for control of drugs and other criminal rackets first disclosed in a leaked police intelligence report in New Zealand three years ago.

Linked to similar international reports, the New Zealand paper confirmed the emergence of outlaw motorcycle gangs as major players in global organised crime intent on ridding their fields of smaller rivals and dividing turf between the biggest clubs.

As early as 1993 British criminal intelligence experts were warning of the rise of Hells Angels as the fastest-growing organised crime group in the world, with operations reaching into drug trafficking, contract killing, prostitution and violence.

Echoing similar warnings from the United States - where the Hells Angels, Outlaws and Bandidos had mapped out takeover strategies and turf divisions - the New Zealand report said national and international plans had been drawn up to "limit and control the amount of competition for the shrinking dollar in the illicit trading areas such as the drugs market, and to strengthen the financial position of the major players."

For Australia the plans were detailed in a pact called "Australia 2000" and involved the six major gangs: Hells Angels, Outlaws, Bandidos, Rebels, Black Uhlans and Nomads.

New Zealand police also told a parliamentary inquiry that the local Hells Angels and Highway 61 were waging wars to take control of the nation's 39 bike gangs, with Hells Angels affiliating with the Christchurch-based Road Knights in a bid to dominate the South Island.

The transtasman and international scope of the gangs' turf wars has become increasingly apparent, with Hells Angels and Outlaws fighting a bloody campaign in Britain, sparked when the Outlaws began taking over smaller clubs in a bid to move further into drugs and racketeering.

In Scandinavia, at least seven bikies have been killed and dozens injured in a similar war between Hells Angels and Bandidos. Although some police doubt the existence of "Australia 2000" and similar international pacts, a rising tide of violence between bikie gangs in Australia, and the spoils to be won from trafficking and rackets, have given credence to the reports.

Police say the gangs are using their international connections to extend and consolidate their operations, particularly the import, manufacture and distribution of amphetamines - Australia's second most popular illicit drugs and a market dominated by the bikie gangs.

Australia's National Crime Authority (NCA) targeted the gangs in an extended operation called Operation Panzer, which led to the arrest of about 200 people on charges ranging from drugs to possession of assault rifles and counterfeit money.

Some extent of the profitability was uncovered during efforts by the NCA to confiscate more than $A3 million ($3.74 million) in assets held by Rebels president Alex Vella, frozen after a conviction for possession of cannabis worth $A15,000.

The assets, now largely returned, included a Sydney office block and mansion, a villa in his native Malta, a portfolio of loans and mortgages, two Rolls-Royces - one registered as REBEL-1 - two Chevrolet Corvettes, a Bentley and a Mercedes, and 70 motorcycles.

It was two of Vella's Rebels who in 1997 killed rivals Michael Kulakowski, the feared Mercedes-owning Bandidos president who had survived the 1984 shootout with Comancheros in the western Sydney suburb of Milperra, in which seven people died.

Although it is uncertain if Kulakowski's death was the result of turf wars or a personal vendetta, violence has been mounting between rival gangs for three years as the biggest - led by the Rebels and Outlaws - consolidate territory and push further into regional Australia, often squeezing out local small fry as they move.

Early in 1997 the Rebels moved into the industrial city of Newcastle, north of Sydney - territory claimed by two other gangs, the Nomads and the Life and Death Club, whose clubhouse several years earlier had been confiscated after members dealt drugs there.

Soon after the move the Rebels headquarters was attacked by rival bikies wielding a shotgun and baseball bats.

Several months later, in the north Queensland town of Mackay, the Outlaws invaded the turf of the local Odin's Warriors gang, first beating a group of Warriors then ambushing the gang en masse, using trucks to knock down and block the riders from escaping a 30-minute firefight with semi-automatic rifles.

Since then war has broken out between Perth's two biggest bikie gangs, the Coffin Cheaters and Club Deroes, and between Bandidos and Rebels in Adelaide, where earlier this month they firebombed each other's headquarters.

Skirmishes and bombings have also hit Rebels and Bandidos in Sydney.