Alessio Emmanuel Vella (born 5 June 1953), or Maltese Falcon, is a Maltese businessman, former boxer and the former national president of the

Rebels Motorcycle Club The Rebels Motorcycle Club is an outlaw motorcycle club. At its peak in Australia, it had around 70 chapters and over 1,000 members and associates nationwide, making it the largest club in the country at the time. It was founded by Clint Jacks ...

in Australia. Despite having lived in Australia since the 1960s, he is not a citizen of the country. This caused visa problems when he tried to return to Australia after having gone to Japan with his son Adam (also a boxer) for a boxing match in 2007. The

New South Wales Police Force The New South Wales Police Force is a law enforcement agency of the state of New South Wales, Australia, established in 1862. With more than 17,000 police officers, it is the largest police organisation in Australia, policing an area of 801,60 ...

tried to bar Vella from re-entering Australia then, but he was eventually allowed to return. In 2014 Vella visited his friends and family in Malta, and while he was there, his residency visa was cancelled by the Australian

Minister for Immigration and Border Protection The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship is a ministerial post of the Australian Government and is currently held by Tony Burke since July 2024 in the First Albanese ministry, Albanese ministry. The post was created in 1945 and its inaugur ...

. Vella tried to appeal in the

High Court of Australia The High Court of Australia is the apex court of the Australian legal system. It exercises original and appellate jurisdiction on matters specified in the Constitution of Australia and supplementary legislation. The High Court was establi ...

in October 2015, but was not permitted to.

Private life

Vella was born into a strict Catholic family in

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

and was one of eleven children. His parents lived in a small villa near Buskett. He began work at the age of eight, carrying buckets of water on a building site for 30 cents a day, and is functionally illiterate. He and his family then moved to Australia in the 1960s and established a strawberry farm near Horsley Park, New South Wales. In his 20s, he sometimes worked two or three jobs at a time; as a

bouncer A bouncer (also known as a door supervisor) is a type of security guard, employed at licensed or sanctioned venues such as bars, nightclubs, cabaret clubs, strip clubs and casinos. A bouncer's duties are to provide security, to check legal ag ...

, labourer and

bricklayer A bricklayer, which is related to but different from a mason, is a craftsperson and tradesperson who lays bricks to construct brickwork. The terms also refer to personnel who use blocks to construct blockwork walls and other forms of maso ...

. He also joined the Rebels Motorcycle Club while pursuing a promising career as a boxer; he eventually became the Maltese light-heavyweight champion. After a serious road accident, he received in compensation and used this money to set up a business importing and selling motorcycles.

Legal issues

In 1990, police found a $15,000 stash of

marijuana Cannabis (), commonly known as marijuana (), weed, pot, and ganja, List of slang names for cannabis, among other names, is a non-chemically uniform psychoactive drug from the ''Cannabis'' plant. Native to Central or South Asia, cannabis has ...

while searching his home, which they believed to be a

methamphetamine Methamphetamine (contracted from ) is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug use, recreational or Performance-enhancing substance, performance-enhancing drug and less commonly as a secon ...

factory. He was sentenced to 18 months of two-nights-a-week prison, and two-days-a-week community service. He has also been arrested, but not convicted, of a number of other crimes including stabbing two men and assaulting a woman. He was freed on appeal after being given six months in jail for the latter. On 28 May 2008, Vella won a court case against the

ANZ Bank The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, commonly known as ANZ Bank, is a multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is Australia's second-largest bank by assets and fo ...

. He sued them for $2.7 million after his former business partner, Tony Caradonna, re-mortgaged three properties, including the Rebels' clubhouse, for $2.4 million by falsifying Vella's signature. He also claimed $300,000 was fraudulently withdrawn from their joint bank account. On 16 June 2014, Immigration Minister

Scott Morrison Scott John Morrison (born 13 May 1968) is an Australian former politician who served as the 30th prime minister of Australia from 2018 to 2022. He held office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, leader of the Liberal Party and was ...

cancelled Vella's residency visa on character grounds while Vella was visiting Malta. Vella attempted to challenge the action in the

, but on 16 October 2015 the court refused his application for

leave to appeal In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vella, Alex 1954 births Living people Maltese emigrants to Australia 20th-century Maltese businesspeople Maltese Roman Catholics Maltese prisoners and detainees Gang members Boxers from Sydney Maltese boxers Australian male boxers 20th-century Australian sportsmen