Australia - CORPORATE giant and major political donor Visy Industries employs a trucking company run by a convicted drug trafficker and founding chapter boss of the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle group.
Visy continued its long-term contracts with the company, Cadpro, after its owner, Hells Angels East County president Stephen James Rogers, was sentenced in 2007 to three years' prison for drug trafficking.
At Rogers' sentencing hearing, a senior Visy manager gave character evidence for the bikie boss and said the company would stand by him despite his conviction for trafficking amphetamines, parcels of which were found in Rogers' Visy work jacket.
Rogers also dined with senior Visy managers just before going to prison.
The revelations about Visy's Hells Angels links come as Australia's criminal intelligence chief warned businesses about outlaw motorcycle groups - which he described as a serious threat to the nation - as they tried to penetrate further into transport and security sectors.
"There is no question of serious organised crime involved in outlaw motorcycle groups. There are people who continue to report that they are a fraternity of people who like to ride a motorcycle on a Sunday. That is not the case," said John Lawler, head of the Australian Crime Commission. "Businesses need to properly guard themselves from penetration from these groups, which will cause them serious damage."
Visy spokesman Tony Gray told The Age that the company was aware that Rogers, who is serving the rest of his sentence on home detention, was a Hells Angels member, but this was not grounds "to terminate the arrangement" between Visy and Cadpro.
Five Cadpro trucks move Visy products around the country, earning the company tens of thousands of dollars every year. When The Age called the Cadpro office and spoke to Rogers, he declined to answer questions.
Rogers' charges stem from a 2004 probe by organised crime squad detectives investigating his role in covering up an accident involving a Cadpro crane. Police found almost a kilo of chemicals used to make speed at Rogers' Kew home and about 200 grams of amphetamines. Two initialled parcels of amphetamines were found in his Visy work jacket.
Drug-making chemicals were also found in his trucking yard near Visy-badged trailers. Police intelligence in 2004 suggested Rogers was using his trucks to transport precursor chemicals.
Business interests tied to Rogers have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from Visy by transporting its paper products around Victoria since the 1990s.
In 2007, Visy's national trucking manager, Craig Smith, said the company's contracts with Rogers - worth up to $20,000 a fortnight - would not be impacted by his bikie connection or drugs conviction.
"There were people who wanted to show him the door and there was other people who looked at his record and - I mean, for all those years he'd been involved in a number of things that greatly benefited Visy through that time," Mr Smith told the court.
"He's had to endure some preconceived ideas about who he is, he's had to endure the stigma of being in a bikie club, where he's had to do it hard, and he's had to do it more honest."
Rogers was sergeant-at-arms of the Nomads motorcycle gang before applying to the Hells Angels world council to set up a Victorian Hells Angels chapter, East County, in Campbellfield.
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