Brisbane Hells Angels bikies ranks fall

The Hells Angels have seen their local ranks plummet to as few as six active members, according to police intelligence.

Their numbers have been decimated amid an unprecedented political and police assault on bikie gangs – but also because of serious internal divisions and violence.

The Sunday Mail can reveal that Sydney-based bikie Zeljko “Steve” Mitrovic was the founding president of the Hells Angels’ first inner city Brisbane chapter before his murder over an unrelated underworld dispute in January last year.

Those who mourned him include onetime Brisbane Bronco turned Hells Angel enforcer Michael Spence, who was a pallbearer at Mitrovic’s funeral, and accused drug traffickers Nuno and Bruno Da Silva, who were handed their club “colours” by Mitrovic.

Taskforce Maxima boss Mick Niland said the “Brisbane City Crew” had “collapsed” with the arrest of Spence, its sergeant-at-arms, and the Da Silvas – Nuno being its treasurer – over an alleged ice trafficking ring last October.

The trio had quit the club and made plans to melt down their Hells Angels gold jewellery. As they were no longer be members, the laws which punished club members with extra jail terms and slashed bail prospects would no longer apply to them.

The Brisbane City Crew at one stage – under the influence of Mitrovic’s co-founder Peter Sidirourgous – was vying to become the “senior” Brisbane chapter over the Hells Angels’ original Hillcrest base.

All references to the crew, which once posed for a group photo in a Kangaroo Point park at the foot of the Story Bridge, have been pulled from the Angels’ worldwide website.

One senior bikie source claimed the true number of Hells Angels locally was between 15 and 20.

However, the Sunday Mail has been able to identify only three active Hells Angels members locally.

They are Brisbane chapter president Mark Nelms, who retains the chair of the bikies’ lobby group the United Motorcycle Council of Queensland, treasurer Terry McCormick, and building and security industry figure Jeff Ehlers.

Sidirourgous, who also founded the Angels’ Gold Coast chapter with Mitrovic in 2012, is said to be virtually based in Sydney now despite his ongoing ownership of Gold Coast gyms.

Sources said some departures from the local Angels’ ranks had come well before the Newman government’s crackdown on gangs.

One member who had just been released from prison was violently ejected from the club and told he was not suitable.

Another member who quit months before the crackdown was Matt Lucas, who along with Sidirourgous and Spence had an interest in Norman Park tattoo parlour Platinum Ink.

Lucas’ parlour was attacked in 2012 by the same masked men with baseball bats that put the Da Silvas in hospital when they invaded Millennium Locks 45 minutes later.

Hells Angels members suspected members of the Bandidos’ Centro chapter in the attack.

Ironically, Lucas is a friend of one-time Bandidos Centro president George Bejat, with whom he was jailed over a cocaine trafficking ring busted by the Australian Crime Commission in 2008.