Bikie boss Alex Vella wants to come ‘home’ to Australia

EXILED bikie boss Alex Vella has made a desperate plea to be allowed back into Australia, saying he is broke in Malta and reduced to couch surfing.

EXILED bikie boss Alex Vella has made a desperate plea to be allowed back into Australia, saying he is broke and couch-surfing with friends.

In an exclusive interview with News Corp, the man who headed the nation’s biggest bikie gang, the Rebels, pleaded for his Australian residency visa to be returned.

“I’m an innocent man and I believe in respect and people respect me for that,’’ he said, from the run-down apartment in which he lives in Malta, the small Mediterranean island of his birth.

“I am not a kidnapper. I may have been in a few hotel fights but that is all.”

Vella, 64, became one of the first people to be exiled from Australia in 2014 when the Government introduced new laws stripping Australian residency from dual nations deemed to be on unfit character to be allowed to stay in Australia.

Alex Vella with his friend Father Raphael Martino in Malta. Picture: David Dyson

The national president of the Rebels was visiting Malta to settle an old tax debt and visit family when the Australian Government swooped, revoking his residency rights and stranding him permanently on the other side of the world from his Australia wife Heather and his two adult children.

He told News Corp he had nothing to do with organised crime, and said his multimillion-dollar business empire had been destroyed by crippling legal bills as he fought a series of unsuccessful court appeals against his exile.

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“I am not in organised crime — if that was the case I would have been in jail a long time ago,” he said.

“I need to wait and see if other people can fight this because I don’t have the money to keep spending.

“But I will never stop trying to come home.”

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton Immigration told News Corp Vella would “never” be allowed back into Australia, as he failed the country’s character test.

“This man is a foreign national,” Mr Dutton said.

“His visa to enter Australia has been cancelled. He will not be issued another visa. He will never return to Australia.”

Alex Vella leads a procession at the funeral of Rebels motor cycle bikie gang murder victims Hubert Western and Graham Nixon in 1999.

Vella had lived in Australia for 47 years when his residency visa was cancelled under section 501 of the Migration Act, which allows authorities to remove residents of poor character.

He has also been targeted by a Government task-force of police, tax office and social security investigators, and says he’s been told he owes the Australian Taxation Office $1.8 million.

The Australian Taxation Office declined to answer questions about his tax debt.

Vella said the ATO action was designed to stop his funding any more court appeals.

“I owe about $1.5 million as it is now,” he said.

“Luckily I’ve got rent coming to me but I still had to borrow money because they made it very hard for me.

“I worked very hard for my cash and it’s not easy.

“My lawyer said ‘they want to send you bankrupt’.

“I’ve had to sell property and I borrowed from my son, I borrowed from my wife’s brother. Police have been picking on me since I was 15 years old.”

Alex Vellaat apartment in the Mosta district of Malta with one of the birds he says are his only posessions. Picture: David Dyson

Vella is one of the most high-profile scalps claimed by the Government in its campaign to deport dual nationals who failed the character test, with Mr Dutton and Justice Minister Michael Keenan saying bikie leaders were targeted as part of an organised effort to disrupt bikie gangs and “cut the head off the snake.’’

He has spent the last two years and eight months staying with friends in Malta and relying heavily on the generosity of others.

“(My friend) is helping me out,” he said.

“Another guy let me live with him and his wife for six months. He is a really good guy. And another guy and his wife keep saying ‘ Alex come stay with us’. I’m really lucky to have such good friends.”

The former bikie leader said the distance had put a strain on his marriage.

The Rebels motorcycle gang started in Brisbane in 1967 but quickly spread to Sydney, Melbourne and the Gold Coast.

Vella became the national president in 1973 after founding the Sydney Chapter.

Rebels Motorcycle Club national president Alex Vella pictured in Port Augusta on October 14, 2000. Picture: Cronin David

He appealed his visa revocation in the Federal Court in 2015 but lost after police tendered documents detailing more than 1200 crimes allegedly committed by Rebels bikies while Vella was in charge.

The crimes ranged from kidnapping to extortion and drug trafficking.

Vella denied any involvement in those charges and said he has been unfairly placed on the Interpol watchlist, heavily restricting his travel.

“I am being targeted financially so that I cannot fight back,” he said.

“They (the ATO) threw the book at me saying I was a bike dealer and owed $1.8 million in unpaid tax.

“I might sell a few bikes here and there but I am a collector.

“I had to settle a few months ago and it really hurt me.”

Vella, who still owns several properties in Australia including his old clubhouse in Leppington, said he was forced to sell assets to pay debts.

He has refused to sell any of his vintage motorcycles which are sitting in storage in Sydney saying it would be like “selling a piece of my soul”.

Originally published as Bikie boss Alex Vella wants to come ‘home’ to Australia