For more than a decade, Damian has sat at the top of the Rebels Motorcycle Club Australia, a position that has kept him under constant police attention and inside some of the biggest legal battles involving outlaw motorcycle clubs in the country.
His rise came after a major change in the rebels leadership.
In 2014, longtime national president Alex Vela was prevented from returning to Australia after his visa was cancelled while he was overseas in Malta.
In the period that followed, Damian Vela emerged as the club’s national president and began leading an organization facing heavy scrutiny from police across several states.
Vela’s name appeared in disputes inside the club, in court challenges over police powers, and in repeated confrontations with specialist squads targeting outlaw motorcycle groups.
One of the earliest public signs of his authority came during an internal rebels matter involving Troy Cusen’s then connected to the Mount Druit chapter.
Court material later showed that Vela was involved in removing Cusen’s club colors during an internal process.
A detail that gave investigators and the public a rare look at how discipline could be handled inside the organization.
Police pressure continued to build.
In New South Wales, the Raptor squad repeatedly focused on senior rebels figures.
Vela challenged some of that pressure through the courts, including a high court case over the validity of serious crimerevention laws.
In 2019, the high court upheld the legislation, allowing authorities to continue using restrictions aimed at limiting communication, movement, and association among people linked to organized crime.
That did not remove Vela from the top.
He later faced further police attention in South Australia, where he pleaded guilty to associating with gang members in Adelaide.
In 2022, searches in Sydney again brought his name into the headlines when he was charged with firearms related offenses.
Those charges need to be treated separately from proven convictions because not every allegation in his public record ended with the same legal outcome.
Then came another challenge from inside the rebels.
By 2024, a dispute in Western Australia had led to dozens of members leaving the club.
Reporting linked the split to tensions between national leadership and senior W figures.
For an organization built around loyalty and hierarchy, that internal break raised an obvious question about how much control remained at the national level.
Yet by September 2026, Domian was still being publicly described as the national president of the Rebels Motorcycle Club Australia.
That is what makes his story worth examining.
How did he take control after Alex Vela’s long era ended?
How did he remain in charge through police raids, legal challenges, internal disputes, and major defections?
And what does his decade at the top tell us about how the rebels have changed?
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We are starting with the leadership change that put Damian at the center of the rebels.
Long before Damian Vela became the national face of the rebels, his name had already appeared in New South Wales court records.
Reliable public material says little about his childhood or his early years around the club.
So, the clearest starting point comes from a criminal case that reached the NSW court of criminal appeal in 2009.
The case related to an incident outside the Wacia Hotel in June 2006.
Damian Vela was later convicted by a jury of robbery and company along with three counts of obtaining a valuable thing by deception.
The prosecution relied on CCTV witness evidence and the later use of a credit card taken during the incident.
Case chat.
The court record shows that expensive motorcycle parts were purchased using that card not long afterwards.
Prosecutors argued that Vela and the other men involved were connected to both the original robbery and the later transactions.
In February 2008, Damian received a custodial sentence that included an 18-month non-parole period for the robbery offense.
Separate fixed terms were imposed for the deception charges.
He challenged the convictions.
The appeal was heard in 2009 with Vela arguing that the jury verdicts were unreasonable and could not be supported by the evidence.
The Court of Criminal Appeal rejected that argument.
The judges found that the crown case was strong enough for the jury to reach the verdict it did.
And Damian’s appeal was dismissed case yet.
That case matters because it gives us a documented picture of Vela before he became one of the best known names inside the rebels.
At the time, however, the club itself was still dominated by another Vela, Alex Vela.
Damian’s uncle had led the Rebels for decades.
Under Alex, the club expanded across Australia and developed chapters in multiple states.
By 2014, ABC reporting described the Rebels as the country’s largest outlaw motorcycle club with more than 2,000 members, ABC News.
The size of the organization also brought sustained police attention.
Between 2012 and 2014, the rebels became the focus of a national law enforcement operation known as Task Force Aero.
Police raids, arrests, and disruption strategies were being used across several jurisdictions, while state governments introduced stronger laws aimed at outlaw motorcycle clubs.
ABC News.
Damen was therefore coming through the organization at a time when senior rebels figures were facing growing pressure from police and regulators.
His family connection to Alex gave him obvious visibility, but family alone did not automatically make someone national president.
The rebels had longest established chapters, local presidents and senior members across the country.
Any national leader had to deal with competing personalities, state level interests, and constant attention from law enforcement.
Then in June 2014, the club’s leadership was thrown into uncertainty.
Alex Vela traveled to Malta, the country of his birth, and while he was overseas, the Australian government cancelled his residency visa on character grounds.
He had lived in Australia for decades but had never become an Australian citizen.
ABC News.
Suddenly, the man who had led the rebels since the 1970s could not return.
Alex challenged the decision through the courts and publicly denied being involved in criminal activity.
In 2015, the High Court refused his application for special leave to appeal, leaving him in Malta.
ABC News.
For the Rebels, that created a leadership problem unlike anything the club had dealt with before.
The longtime president was still alive and publicly identifying himself with the organization, but he was physically outside Australia.
Damian Vela was about to move into the space that opened behind him.
What followed was not an immediate handover, but a gradual shift that would place Damian at the center of leadership.
The first clear public sign that Damian Vela had moved into national leadership came only months after his uncle was stranded overseas.
In August 2014, an internal dispute involving the rebels Mount Drit Chapter reached the courts and gave outsiders an unusual glimpse at Damian’s authority inside the club.
The man at the center of that matter was Troy Cusins, then president of the Mount Droo chapter.
According to court documents later tendered at Penri Local Court, Cusins received a call telling him to meet Damian at a restaurant in Western Sydney and to bring his club colors with him.
The request was serious.
Within outlaw motorcycle clubs, colors represent membership and standing, and losing them can mean losing your place in the organization.
Phone calls recorded at the time showed Cusen was worried before the meeting.
He contacted another Rebels member and explained that Damian wanted to see him personally.
When the meeting took place, Damian removed Cusen’s colors after conducting his own internal inquiry into allegations involving another member.
The court material did not suggest Damian was acting as a police investigator or making a legal finding.
This was an internal club decision separate from the criminal case being handled by NSW authorities.
Forgotten Australians.
That distinction became important later.
Cusens faced serious criminal charges connected to the underlying incident, but the club s internal process and the court process were not the same thing.
The episode nevertheless showed that Damian was already exercising authority beyond one local chapter and was being treated as the person who could make decisions affecting senior members.
By early 2015, some reporting was already describing Damian as the rebels national president.
At the same time, police publicly suggested the wider leadership picture was unsettled after Alex Vela was kept out of Australia.
That tension explains why the transition is difficult to date to one exact day.
What is clear is that Damian had moved into a position where senior members were answering directly to him while the old leadership structure was being reshaped.
The rebels were also dealing with pressure from rival clubs.
In July 2015, NSW police charged rebels and Finins members after separate confrontations in Sydney s West.
Officers searched homes across several suburbs and seized drugs, ammunition, and rebels material.
Those arrests did not involve Damian personally, but they showed the environment he was now leading through.
Local disputes, constant police surveillance, and chapter spread across a large national organization.
ABC News.
Alex Vela, meanwhile, continued to reject claims that his absence had thrown the club into disarray.
Speaking from Malta in 2015, he said the rebels had continued adding chapters and members despite his inability to return.
Police gave a different assessment and said some members had handed in their colors.
ABC News.
Damian’s challenge was therefore not simply replacing his uncle, he had to establish authority while Alex remained an influential figure from overseas.
While police were targeting the club at chapter level and while senior members across Australia had their own histories and loyalties for someone whose presidency was still being defined publicly, these decisions mattered because they showed that leadership was already being exercised in practice, not merely claimed through family connections.
The Kusen’s episode showed one way Damian handled that problem.
Rather than relying only on family connection, he was already making decisions that affected the status of experienced rebels members.
That authority would soon be tested outside the club as well.
NSW police began using increasingly powerful legal tools against senior outlaw motorcycle figures, and Damian would eventually challenge those powers all the way to the high court.
By 2018, Damen Vela’s position inside the rebels was well established, but the pressure coming from NSW police was becoming more sophisticated.
This time, the issue was not a raid or a single criminal charge.
Police were trying to use a new law that could restrict how people moved, communicated, and associated with others.
On 5 October 2018, the NSW police commissioner began proceedings in the Supreme Court seeking serious crimerevention orders against Damian Vela, Johnny Vela, and Michael Fedoy.
The legislation had been introduced in 2016 [clears throat] and gave the Supreme Court or district court power to impose restrictions where a court was satisfied that an order could help prevent future serious crime related activity.
Tuahan Toya.
Police wanted the three men prevented from associating with members or former members of outlaw motorcycle clubs attending club-l premises and traveling in vehicles between 9:00 p.m.
And 6:00 a.m.
Except in limited circumstances.
The proposed orders also sought to restrict encrypted communication devices and prevent them from possessing more than one mobile phone.
ABC News for Demian those conditions would have affected his ability to function as a national club leader.
But instead of arguing only about whether the restriction should apply to him, Vela and the other plaintiffs challenged the law itself.
Their lawyers took the dispute to the high court, arguing that part of the Serious Crime Prevention Orders Act was unconstitutional because it gave courts a role incompatible with their position under Australia’s constitutional system.
One concern was that the legislation allowed courts to consider alleged serious crime related activity even where a person had not been convicted.
And in some circumstances where charges had ended in a quiddle or had not proceeded.
Tuan Toya, the NSW government defended the legislation as preventive rather than punitive.
Its position was that the orders were designed to reduce future risk, not to impose another criminal sentence.
Tuan Toya, the case was heard by the high court in August 2019.
On the 6th November, the court delivered its decision.
By majority, the judges upheld the validity of the law.
They found that the legislation did not improperly undermine the institutional integrity of NSW courts.
The court emphasized that judges retain discretion when deciding whether an order should be made and what restrictions were appropriate.
Tuanto for police.
The result preserved a powerful tool for dealing with organized crime figures without relying solely on criminal prosecutions.
For Vela, it was a major legal setback, but it did not remove him from the rebels leadership that became a recurring feature of his time as national president.
Police could increase surveillance, introduce restrictions, and challenge the way senior members associated with one another, but the club itself continued operating.
The high court case also showed that Damian was willing to fight police strategy through the legal system rather than simply accept the conditions being sought against him.
His next encounters with authorities would be more direct.
They would involve roadside policing, anti-consorting laws in South Australia, and another round of searches that brought his name back into national reporting.
After the high court decision, Damian’s dealings with police became less about constitutional arguments and more about the everyday restrictions placed on senior bikey figures.
One encounter involved NSW police Raptor squad while Vela was riding his Harley through Sydney.
Later reporting said an officer used capsicum spray during the arrest and that Vela was subsequently fined for resisting arrest.
The incident occurred several years before his South Australian case and became another example of the increasingly direct policing methods being used against senior outlaw motorcycle club members, the Nightly.
By 2022, Vela was facing attention in another state.
South Australian authorities charged him alongside Alex Vela Jr.
After alleging the men had associated with members of a declared criminal organization in Adelaide.
The matter came under anti-consorting laws designed to restrict meetings between people identified as participants in prescribed organizations.
Damian later pleaded guilty to associating with gang members.
The offense was different from the serious criminal allegations that often dominate Bikey reporting.
It was about who he had been meeting rather than an accusation that he had personally organized a major criminal operation.
For someone holding a national leadership position, however, laws restricting association created an obvious practical problem.
Meeting members from different chapters was part of maintaining relationships across a national club.
Yet those same meetings could draw police attention the nightly.
While the Adelaide matter was still moving through the courts, another investigation was developing in Sydney.
In March 2022, NSW police established Strike Force Veril to investigate alleged firearm possession involving senior rebels members.
Detectives said they identified a location in Sydney s Southwest that was being used to store weapons.
During the investigation, officers seized an R-15 style semi-automatic rifle, two Glock pistols with their serial numbers removed, a revolver, ammunition, and additional magazines.
Police then executed search warrants at homes in West Hawkton and Abbottsbury as well as a business in Nurell and Mirage News.
Damen Vela and Alex Vela Jr.
Were among four people charged.
Police alleged Damen possessed an unauthorized pistol and ammunition while [clears throat] additional offenses were laid against the other accused.
Those charges were allegations at the time and the publicly available reporting does not provide a clear final outcome for every count, so they should not be described as convictions.
The timing created another complication.
Only days earlier, Damian and Alex Jr.
Had successfully obtained permission connected to their South Australian bail conditions to travel overseas.
They were expected to go to Malta, where Alex Veliser had been living since his Australian residency visa was cancelled.
The trip was connected to celebrations marking 50 years of the Rebels Motorcycle Club.
After the Sydney arrests, however, prosecutors sought a Supreme Court review of the travel arrangements.
Police argued that senior club figures traveling overseas raised concerns about further rebels activity outside Australia.
Malta today comm MT for Damian.
The episode showed how difficult ordinary club activity had become at national level.
Interstate travel, overseas meetings, and contact with other rebels members were all capable of attracting scrutiny.
Yet, none of these episodes removed him from the presidency.
By the time the Adelaide case was resolved, Vela had already been national president for years.
Police restrictions had become part of the environment around him rather than something that automatically ended his leadership.
The more serious challenge would come from inside the rebels itself.
Members in different states were becoming increasingly unhappy with decisions coming from the national leadership.
And in Western Australia, that frustration would eventually turn into one of the largest departures the club had experienced in years.
By 2024, Damian’s biggest challenge was no longer coming from a courtroom or police operation.
It was coming from inside the rebels themselves.
The pressure surfaced in Western Australia, where veteran member Carl Lbrook had spent about 25 years with the club.
Labbrook had been a senior figure in the what a chapter and had taken on greater responsibility after former state president Nick Martin was no longer leading.
By 2024, he was dealing with a court case over more than 450,000 in cash that police had found during searches in December 2022, the nightly.
During that case, Llaybrook told the Perth magistrate’s court that the money belonged to the rebels.
He said it came from membership fees and fundraising, including money collected for a legal challenge to W anti-bikey laws.
His evidence also included criticism of how club finances had been handled.
The magistrate later rejected Labrook’s explanation and found him guilty of possessing unlawfully obtained cash.
ABC News the court appearance created problems inside the rebels before the case had even finished.
According to police sources quoted by the nightly senior figures in Sydney wanted copies of Lebrook’s court transcript after his evidence raised questions about internal club matters.
Damian Vela was reported to have challenged Labrook’s integrity and the disagreement quickly became personal.
The nightly.
Labok refused to send the transcripts himself, pointing out that the documents were publicly available and could be ordered normally.
Soon afterwards, he handed in his colors.
That decision triggered a much bigger reaction in Western Australia.
Around three dozen other rebels members also left.
Reporting at the time said some members were already frustrated by what they saw as limited support from national leadership during earlier tensions with the Mongols in Wah the Nightly.
The resignations reduced what had once been one of the rebels strongest state operations.
The Nightly reported that only a small number of committed members remained in Western Australia after the walk out.
The Nightly.
The situation became more difficult when Labbrook began moving towards the Common Chero Club.
In June 2024, he appeared at court wearing black and gold colors associated with the Common Cheros.
Police interpreted it as a sign of where he was heading and reporting indicated several former rebels were considering the same move.
The nightly for Damian Vela, this was a different kind of leadership test.
Police restrictions could be challenged in court.
Charges could be defended, but a national president could not use either approach to stop experienced members from deciding they no longer wanted to stay.
The Western Australian split exposed a wider problem.
The rebels had chapters spread across a huge country and decisions made by leaders in Sydney did not always satisfy members thousands of kilometers away.
Yet even after losing dozens of members, Damian remained national president.
The club had taken a serious hit in the West, but the leadership in Sydney survived.
What happened next would show whether the rebels had stabilized or whether Vela was leading a smaller organization trying to hold together after years of internal strain for now.
By 2026, Damian Vela was still being publicly identified as the national president of the Rebels Motorcycle Club Australia.
Even after the club had endured years of police pressure, court action, and major internal losses, that continuing position became visible again in September when Vela married in Sydney.
The ceremony at Our Lady of Victories in Horsely Park drew a large number of rebels members and attracted the attention of NSW police Raptor squad.
Officers checked vehicles outside the church, but no arrests were made and Vela was not charged over the event.
Daily Telegraph, the wedding reception later moved to Dolton House in Hyde Park.
Footage and photographs from the night showed Vela wearing Rebels insignia and that created a separate licensing issue for the venue.
NSW police later issued Dolton House with a 1-100 fine because Outlaw Motorcycle Club insignia had been displayed inside licensed premises.
Vela himself was not fined or charged in relation to that matter.
Daily Telegraph.
The episode was significant for another reason.
More than a decade after the leadership uncertainty that followed Alex Velis exclusion from Australia, Damian was still being described in current reporting as national president.
The title had survived the Western Australian walkout, court cases, and repeated efforts by police to place restrictions around senior club figures.
But the organization around him was no longer the same rebels that had once been described as Australia’s largest outlaw motorcycle club.
Recent reporting on Australia’s major biky groups has described the rebels as weakened by leadership losses, internal disputes, and defections.
The Western Australian split was part of that decline, but it was not the only factor.
Long-running police operations and anti-consorting laws had also made it harder for chapters to operate in the same way they had in earlier years.
Daily Telegraph.
That makes Vela’s position unusual.
Remaining national president does not necessarily mean the club has retained the same membership numbers or influence it had a decade earlier.
It means that despite those changes, Vela has remained the senior figure publicly associated with the Australian organization.
There is also a difference between being closely monitored and being convicted of a new offense.
The 2026 wedding again demonstrated that distinction.
Police were present and the event attracted heavy media attention, but there were no arrests at the ceremony.
The later fine applied to the licensed venue, not to Vela personally.
By this point, his leadership had become less about a dramatic takeover and more about endurance.
He had taken over during uncertainty, faced restrictions designed to limit contact between senior members, dealt with state level tensions, and watched a major group of Western Australian members leave.
Yet, the presidency remained his.
That does not answer every question about how much influence the rebels still hold nationally, but it does explain why Damian Vela remains important to the club as modern history and police attention around that leadership has never disappeared.
More than 10 years after he first emerged at the top, the title was still attached to his name.
By late 2026, Damen Vela’s position at the head of the rebels had lasted for more than a decade.
But explaining how he remained there is not as simple as pointing to one court case.
One police operation or one internal decision.
The rebels themselves had changed around him.
At their peak, the club had chapters across Australia and was regularly described as the country s largest outlaw motorcycle organization.
More recent reporting paints a different picture.
Membership losses, defections, and disputes between state chapters have reduced the organization s presence in some areas, particularly Western Australia.
Even so, the rebels continue to operate nationally, and current reporting still identifies Vela as their national president.
Daily Telegraph.
One reason his leadership has lasted [clears throat] may simply be that the presidency survived changes that affected the club underneath it.
Vela did not need every chapter to remain as strong as it had been a decade earlier.
He needed enough support within the organization to retain the national position while individual states dealt with their own problems.
That distinction matters.
The Western Australian walkout showed that national leadership could lose experienced members without automatically losing control of the entire club.
Carl Labbrook and dozens of others left, but there was no public indication that a successful challenge to Velis national presidency followed.
The nightly the same pattern can be seen in his dealings with police.
The high court case did not end in favor and anti-conorting laws have made it harder for senior bikey figures to meet freely.
Police operations have also kept rebels members under close scrutiny, but those measures regulate conduct and association.
They do not themselves decide who holds an internal club position that helps explain why Vela could remain president even while repeatedly appearing in police and court reporting.
There is also the family connection.
Alex Vela had held the presidency for decades before being prevented from returning to Australia in 2014.
Federal court material records Alex’s national president from 1973, giving the Vela name an unusually long history within the organization.
Damian s relationship to him did not automatically guarantee leadership, but it placed him close to the club’s most established national figure at a crucial moment of transition case chat.
More than 10 years later, that transition no longer looks temporary.
In September 2026, Australian reporting was still referring to Damian as the national president of the Rebels Motorcycle Club Australia.
His highly public Sydney wedding also showed that senior rebels members were still gathering around him despite years of legal restrictions and changes within the club.
Daily Telegraph.
So the question is not whether Damian preserved the rebels exactly as they were under his uncle.
He did not inherit a club that remained unchanged.
What he preserved was his position at the top while the organization around him became smaller, more heavily monitored and in some states more divided.
That may ultimately be the most important part of his story.
Damian s decade as national president has been less about one dramatic rise to power than about remaining in place while everything around that position kept changing.
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And if we have missed an important detail or you have a reliable source that adds to this story, let us know in the comments.
