Fugitive Sydney Hells Angels boss Angelo Pandeli now one of Australia’s most wanted men

Laying low overseas after leaving behind an $8m waterfront home in Sydney, police believe Hells Angels boss Angelo Pandeli has quietly assumed power over the billion-dollar ‘Aussie cartel’.

Australian law enforcement has a new top target – Hells Angels president Angelo Pandeli.

Hiding away in a foreign enclave, Pandeli is on the radar of police after he seized power over Australia’s drug trade with the arrest of high-profile figures late last year.

The capture of Hakan Ayik, Comanchero bosses Mark Buddle and Duax Ngakuru and 30 others in Turkey paved the way for Pandeli’s rise to power over a billion-dollar drug empire, police sources said.

The bikie is believed to be living a lavish life on its proceeds from his base in the Middle East, where he has been ever since he fled Sydney.

In that time, he managed to stay under the radar, with some in law enforcement describing him as “the secret Mr Big” of the underworld.

A younger Angelo Pandeli when he was charged for drug offences in Sydney.

Bouncing between Cyprus and Dubai, Pandeli has built up a network of underworld connections around the globe while plunging his money into several business ventures.

Pandeli’s wife Kerry, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, runs a successful clothing brand “Born In Bali” which has a large following on social media. Influencers thronged to the opening of its flagship store in Bali last year.

Kerry Pandeli, who is not accused of any wrongdoing.

Mrs Pandeli runs a popular Bali clothing brand.

Pandeli’s rise to power in recent years has been nothing short of astronomical, police and underworld sources said.

Born in Adelaide to Turkish parents Konstantino and Marika Pandeli, the Hells Angels boss worked his way through the ranks in Sydney as his mum and dad ran pubs in South Australia.

In the 1970s, the family and a young Angelo Pandeli spent time in the town of Whyalla, where they ran the local watering hole The Sundowner Hotel.

Moving to Adelaide in the early 2000s, Pandeli found himself working around the city’s night-life scene while still a junior member of the Hells Angels bikie gang.

Hakan Ayik’s arrest in Turkey in November.

Mark Buddle was deported from northern Cyprus in August.

In 2006 he was found to not be a “fit and proper person” to engage in security services at a local pub, the Newmarket Hotel, after it emerged in court that he was paid to keep other bikies out.

From there, he moved to the bright lights of Sydney, where he became one of the most powerful bikies in the city, known to be a regular at high-end restaurants at Star City casino.

By then, he had taken over as the gang’s national president after moving interstate to set up the Hells Angels’ Sydney city chapter.

Around the same time the 1.85m gang enforcer was fined $1000 in court after being stopped by police in Sussex St with a bumbag containing 3.6g of meth.

When he was 36 Pandeli was arrested by police investigating a shooting.

He was fined $1000 over a drug charge at the time.

Last year, after fleeing the country, Pandeli and his wife sold their Pyrmont home for $8.6 million, raking a $6 million profit from the property first purchased back in 2006 for about $2 million.

The same waterfront home was subject to a raid in December 2018 over suspicions of his links to a failed plot to import $250 million worth of ice into Australia in a small plane.

Pandeli was never charged over that plot.

Inside the plush Pyrmont home the Pandelis sold last year for $8.6m.

Police leaving the Pyrmont home of the Pandelis after a raid in 2018.

Pandeli is believed to have left the country around the same time, after beating an Australian Australian Taxation Office blitz on outlaw motorcycle gangs in 2017.

He was registered with several law enforcement agencies as an Australian Priority Organisation Target (APOT) two years later in 2020.

He is now being hunted by the AFP, and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, as well as the Australian Taxation Office again.

The 52-year-old is known to police as having drug supply labs and manufacturing warehouses around the “golden triangle” of Southeast Asia.

He is one of the original nine members of what was called the “Aussie cartel” responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of drugs coming Down Under.

At their height, the cartel was believed to be turning over $1.5bn through drug trafficking routes into the nation’s ports with the help of dodgy insiders at the border.

The cartel’s operation came crashing down in 2021, when the AFP revealed it had infiltrated their inner circle through the AN0M app sting, where all their messages were read by police in real time.

News tips: [e-mail]

Originally published as Fugitive Sydney Hells Angels boss Angelo Pandeli now one of Australia’s most wanted men