Alleged Finks bikie Nathan Lazarus charged with assaulting cop at home of Ali Bilal
An alleged outlaw motorcycle gang member denies assaulting a police officer at the home of a veteran bikie boss as police investigate a newly formed ACT Finks chapter.
Canberra Star
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An alleged Finks outlaw motorcycle gang member has been charged with assaulting a police officer at the home of a veteran bikie boss, who once changed his name to Tony Soprano.
The alleged incident occurred when NSW Police officers conducted a firearms prohibition order compliance check at the home of Ali Hassan Bilal in Wollogorang, near Goulburn, last September.
Police claim they arrived at the Federal Highway property to find Bilal, who is suspected to be the Finks’ ACT chapter president, with Nathan Charles Lazarus.
There was allegedly an altercation, during which Lazarus is accused of assaulting an officer.
He is further accused of resisting arrest while being handcuffed.
Lazarus, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assaulting and hindering or resisting a police officer in the execution of duty.
He is due to defend the charges at a hearing in Goulburn Local Court in July.
Bilal has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
Details of the alleged incident have been revealed in a series of recent decisions published by the NSW Racing Appeals Tribunal, which declined to quash an interim suspension of Lazarus’ registration as a greyhound handler.
The Greyhound Welfare and Integrity Commission had imposed the interim ban because of the charges brought against Lazarus and the police assertion that he was a Finks bikie.
The decisions, which show Lazarus denies being a member of the Finks, provide a rare insight into what police believe to be the make-up of the gang’s newly formed ACT chapter.
They contain emails from Constable Mitchell Clark, a NSW Police officer who wrote that a Finks vest was found in Bilal’s bedroom wardrobe during last year’s compliance search.
“Ali Bilal is the president of the FINKS OMCG interstate chapter,” Constable Clark wrote.
Bilal, 52, is a stalwart of the Australian bikie scene, having previously been the ACT chapter president and national sergeant-at-arms of the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang.
He is also no stranger to headlines, having made news on a number of previous occasions.
Bilal legally changed his name to Tony Soprano in 2002 before changing it back, creating confusion about his identity when police charged him with steroid possession a decade later.
Those charges were ultimately dropped.
Bilal later returned to the spotlight in 2017, when former Rebels bikies Stephen and Christopher Pattman were sentenced in the ACT Supreme Court over a gang-related shooting.
Stephen Pattman told the court he and Christopher Pattman, his son, had only joined the bikie gang to protect his daughter, who was in a relationship with Bilal.
Both father and son avoided time behind bars, with Stephen Pattman sentenced to an intensive correction order for intentionally and unlawfully discharging a loaded arm in an act endangering life.
Christopher Pattman received a suspended jail sentence for possessing the prohibited firearm his father used in the shooting.
Bilal’s most recent foray into the news was in 2022, when he served three months in jail after pleading guilty to two counts of using a carriage service to threaten serious harm and three charges of using a carriage service to menace.
The offences involved Bilal making a series of what a magistrate described as “grandiose and alarming” phone calls while police had his phone tapped.
The victims of his expletive-laden tirades, which occurred in the context of his involvement with the Rebels, included Scott Janiak and Yazin Al Naqib.
Janiak is named in Constable Clark’s emails as someone police now suspect to be a member of the Finks.
Al Naqib, 35, is also alleged to be a Fink, with a prosecutor describing him as “a well-known member” when the gang’s foray into the nation’s capital was revealed in an unrelated ACT Magistrates Court case late last year.
In that matter, which is listed for sentence in April, Al Naqib has pleaded guilty to failing to comply with a court order by refusing to provide police with passwords for his phone and laptop.
His lawyer, Peter Woodhouse, has said claims about Al Naqib being a Fink are based on “nothing more than suspicion by police”.
The Finks are one of four outlaw motorcycle gangs now calling Canberra home.
It is a far cry from the relatively recent days when the city was a one-gang town dominated by the Rebels, who held their national run in the ACT on the weekend.
The other outlaw motorcycle gangs operating in the ACT are the Comanchero, which has been well-entrenched for about a decade, and local newcomers the Hells Angels.
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