BIKERS EXPAND CRIME EMPIRE

With Structure Akin To Spy Network, Hells Angels Hard To Combat

Restaurant Dejeuners Eggstra!, an unsightly concrete hunk of a
building in north-end Montreal, is on the same block as the
neighbourhood police station. That didn't deter two hooded men from
barging in this month and pumping several bulletsinto two patrons.

The brazen violence was a sign of the times in Quebec's murderous
six-year war between the Hells Angels, the world's most notorious
bikers, and the rival, upstart Rock Machine.

Killed that morning was loan shark Bob Savard, a confidant of Maurice
(Mom) Boucher, Canada's most feared Hells Angel, whose henchmen have
taken intimidation and countersurveillance to an unprecedented level.

Police communications are routinely monitored with scanners.
Clubhouses have their own Internet servers. Police have been followed
home and jail guards have been killed.

For years, the Hells Angels have been identified by Criminal
Intelligence Service Canada as the country's foremost organized-crime
grouping. Today, they are more powerful than ever. CISC's assessment
for 1999 is still being written. But when released, it will show that
despite a wealth of police and legislative initiatives, the underworld
influence of the Angels stretches from coast to coast and even to the
Arctic. Among the big provinces, only Ontario still has no formal
Angels presence.

"The Hells Angels keep growing; they're growing all the time," says
the agency's Staff Sergeant J. P. Levesque. "They now have 18 chapters
throughout Canada. Since 1997, they've taken over Alberta, then it was
Saskatchewan a year later and now they're halfway to getting Manitoba.
The last is Ontario."

In Ottawa, meanwhile, more than 25 different federal committees are
pondering the complexities of organized crime.

"It's the flavour of the day, but the majority of those people don't
know what they're talking about," a police source says bitterly.
"There is no co-ordination -- nothing."

The same is not true for the bikers.

Their cellular structure -- akin to that of terrorist or spy networks
- -- makes investigations extraordinarily difficult. Business is rarely
discussed on the phone, in cars or in buildings. Orders are conveyed
on the street, or by modem, sometimes using elaborate codes.

Equally concealed are the bikers' assets. Through highly paid lawyers
and investment advisers, property is commonly purchased through
numbered companies, while their market share of a drug trade worth at
least $10-billion in Canada annually is skillfully laundered or sent
abroad.

There is also concern that law-enforcement agencies have been
systematically infiltrated.

"I think they've become very good at it, whether through girlfriends
or associates," says RCMP Inspector Garry Clement, who heads the
force's proceeds-of-crime unit. "People are very naive if they think
they haven't patched themselves into some police organization."

For instance, when two Quebec City-based Rock Machine members were
arrested on drug charges a few months ago, they were found to have
internal police documents about bikers, including photographs and
details of gang affiliations.

Within Quebec, the war for control of the drug trade has claimed about
150 lives since 1994, a dozen other people have disappeared and there
have been at least 159 attempted homicides. Over the past five months,
the killings been so numerous that this year may prove the bloodiest
yet.

Now, with the discovery this month of a powerful unexploded bomb
outside a motorcycle shop in Georgetown, west of Toronto, and the
recent arrival in Ontario of two Rock Machine chapters, concern has
surfaced that the struggle for drug profits will spawn further mayhem.

Canada's richest province offers a tempting prize. As things stand,
the drug industry is divided among an array of disparate players,
although among Ontario's 11 biker gangs the Hells Angels have plenty
of friends.

The bikers' image, aided by slick Web sites and self-serving
literature, is awash in myth. Gang emblems are still flaunted on
motorcycle runs, and hard-faced men with scraggly beards and tattoos
are still the main denizens of the heavily fortified clubhouses.

But the real power these days, by every estimate, rests with
multimillionaires with stock options,fancy condominiums and expensive
suits. White organized crime might be the best working description of
the vast enterprise.

Beneath the colourful veneer of the biker rebel lies a cruel, ruthless
world where rivals are beaten, tortured and killed, bar owners
extorted and strippers told to pull double duty as telemarketers,
hoodwinking the elderly out of their life savings. Car theft and
prostitution are other big earners.

But drugs are the big revenue source, and Insp. Clement is watching
developments with dismay.

"I've been with the police for 28 years and when we started out the
bikers were street thugs, very disorganized," he says. "And
unfortunately they [represent] a failure in law enforcement because
we've watched them grow into a multinational criminal corporation.
We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars."

Prosecution is particularly hampered by the reluctance of witnesses to
remember much -- even as the bikers gun one another down in broad
daylight, in crowded public places.

The shooting at Restaurant Dejeuners Eggstra! sent 15 patrons diving
under their tables and left a waitress injured in the leg.

"I didn't see anyone. All I remember is the sound of the pistols --
Pow! Pow!" says Mr. Savard's wounded breakfast companion, former
professional hockey player Normand DescF4teaux.

"I'm the boss, we've got nothing to say," barks the chef behind the
kitchen counter.

In the past three months, four men with close ties to Mr. Boucher, who
heads the Angels' Nomads squad, have either died or vanished.

The latest round of bloodletting began on April 17, when Normand
(Biff) Hamel, another Nomad, left a pediatrician's office in Laval,
north of Montreal, with his wife and son. Two gunmen chased Mr. Hamel
through the busy parking lot, shooting him dead as dozens of
bystanders watched.

Ten days later, former union boss Andre (Dede) Desjardins was killed
outside a restaurant, a day after lunching there with his old friend,
Mr. Boucher.

(An infamous labour legend, Mr. Desjardins was alleged to have been
behind the mass extortion, corruption and vandalism that marred
Quebec's construction industry in the 1970s; lately, police say, he
was into loan sharking.)

Last month, still another friend of Mr. Boucher, Louis (Melou) Roy,
also a Nomad, went missing. Finally, it was the turn of Mr. Savard, a
bear-like man who drove a white Cadillac and reportedly lent out money
at a 52-per-cent annual rate.

There is no pyramid shape to the Hells Angels' power structure. Local
chapters enjoy wide fiscal autonomy. The closest thing to a godfather
is probably "Mom," the 47-year-old Mr. Boucher.

A clean-cut, husky man who favours dark suits and black shirts, he
softens his features with wire-rimmed glasses and a toothy smile, and
is so famous in Quebec that he is mentioned in stand-up comedy routines.

Authorities believed that they had nailed Mr. Boucher in December,
1997, when they charged him with ordering the murder of two prison
guards.

But the prosecution had to rely on the evidence of Stephane (Godasse)
Gagne, a turncoat prospective Angel who testified that he was one of
the three hit men. Of the others, the charred remains of Andre (Toots)
Tousignant were found by the roadside, while Paul (Fonfon) Fontaine
has vanished.

On Nov. 27, 1998, a jury acquitted Mr. Boucher. With a retinue of 30
supporters, he barrelled out of the courtroom and into a van that
roared away through a red light, swerving around a police vehicle in a
blatant display of muscle. Later that day, he and his crew made a
flamboyant ringside appearance at a boxing event.

Since Mr. Boucher's acquittal, police say, the Hells Angels have
become more and more audacious, and by the end of 1999, the Rock
Machine appeared -- wrongly, perhaps -- to be losing ground. Several
high-ranking leaders were assassinated, such as Richard (Bambam)
Lagace, gunned down coming out of a weightlifting centre, and Johnny
Plescio, shot 16 times through the window of his suburban bungalow.

Biker expert and author Yves Lavigne is thus far unconvinced that the
Rock Machine's expansion into Ontario signals a spread of the violence
in Quebec.

But he thinks that over the years, through bureaucracy and ineptitude,
law enforcement has dropped the ball badly.

"The police have enough resources to deal with the biker problem," he
says. "But there's been a complete lack of will to do so. The public
has a real need to be concerned."

Quebec's biker war started in 1994, while the Rock Machine was reeling
from the arrest in the United States of founding leader Salvatore
Cazzetta, accused of importing 11 tonnes of cocaine.

Hells Angels affiliates tried to grab the much smaller Rock Machine's
drug-peddling turf in downtown and east-end Montreal. But the
four-year-old gang refused to roll over.

To date, the war has mostly killed low-ranking prospects. Only three
full-fledged Hells Angels and 11 Rock Machine members have died.

But several innocents have perished too, the first being 11-year-old
Daniel Desrochers, killed in 1995 when a bomb exploded outside a biker
hangout.

Outrage in Quebec over Daniel's death was a catalyst in the creation
of Bill C-95, the 1997 organized-crime legislation that stiffened the
penalties for convicted offenders shown to be members of an
established criminal enterprise.

But so far, C-95 has yet to score a single big hit.

Unlike the United States' far tougher Racketeering Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations statute, which over the past decade has
inflicted severe damage on the big New York Mafia families, C-95 does
not make it an offence per se to belong to an identified crime clan.

The big biker gangs would seem to fit that description. Worldwide, the
Hells Angels have grown from their 1948 inception in California to a
network of about 1,800 members, scattered across 22 countries.

In Canada, there are an estimated 250 full-fledged Hells Angels, plus
perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 associates. The Rock Machine is much smaller,
with no more than 60 full-patch members, mostly in Quebec.

What they share is a rich criminal history. Within Quebec, where the
Angels opened their first chapter in 1977, 106 members are currently
identified and all but three have criminal records. Among the Rock
Machine, the percentage is almost as high.

Staff Sgt. Levesque thinks that it is a joke to regard the members of
the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine as anything but career criminals
and he would like to see them designated as such.

"But you've got that minority of people who will say, 'You can't do
that, it's against the rights of people to associate.' But what about
the rights of people to live in a free society where there is no
crime, no drugs and no war?"

There have been other law-enforcement initiatives in the past three
years: the creation among Canada's police chiefs of an anti-biker
committee, headed by Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino; a
gun-control law; long-stalled money-laundering legislation, which has
received royal assent but is still months away from taking effect.

Yet thus far, nothing seems to have slowed the Angels'
expansion.

More than 300 Hells Angels and Rock Machine members and their
associates are currently behind bars in Quebec -- housed in separate
institutions. But prison is no obstacle to the smooth running of a
criminal organization and the laundering of drug money.

"They're into a lot of legitimate businesses. You can't make the kind
of money they're rolling in and not invest it," Insp. Clement says.
"They've got hundreds of millions."

BATTLE OF QUEBEC

Few weeks went by in Quebec this spring without a biker incident.
Here are some:

Feb. 4: Claude De Serres, reportedly a police informant trying to
infiltrate the Hells Angels, is found dead.

April 17: Hells Angel Normand (Biff) Hamel is shot
dead.

April 23: Hells Angels sympathizers riot in a holding jail in Montreal
and try to storm a wing reserved for the Rock Machine.

April 27: Former union boss Andre (Dede) Desjardins is killed a day
after meeting his friend, Hells Angels chieftain Maurice (Mom) Boucher.

May 1: A Rock Machine associate is shot dead at a Montreal street
corner.

May 6: In a protection-racket move, three Hells Angels underlings
pepper-spray clients in a Quebec City tavern.

May 9: Police arrest two Hells Angels affiliates in a stolen van with
two pistols, a can of gasoline and hoods. Later that day, Gilles
Lesage, an in-law of a Rock Machine member, is found dead inside a
burning car in Montreal.

May 12: Two Rock Machine supporters are wounded in a machine-gunning
at a stop light in Montreal.

May 24: Rival bikers scuffle on the bus taking them from jail to a
courthouse appearance.

May 30, 31: Police dismantle a drug ring linked to the Hells Angels
that used express post to mail cocaine and hashish to Inuit villages
in northern Quebec.

June 6: A Montreal drug dealer with ties to the Rock Machine is shot
dead.

June 9: A Rock Machine supporter in Quebec City survives an
ambush.

June 11: A Hells Angels crew vandalizes three Montreal illegal
after-hours bars, beating up patrons and employees in a
protection-racket display of muscle.

June 16: Hells Angels affiliate Stephane Hilareguy goes missing. His
wife, Natacha Desbiens, is shot dead and their house set on fire.
Their two-month-old baby is left safely next door.

June 22: Hells Angel Louis (Melou) Roy vanishes.

July 3: Hells Angels supporter Christian Marcoux is found dead inside
a burning car.

July 7: Loan shark Robert Savard, a Boucher friend, is killed. Later
that night, Rock Machine supporter Martin (Frankie) Bourget is shot
dead in a Granby camping ground.