By Dan Oakes
Updated
Warehouse owners at a Melbourne industrial estate will lose their insurance because a neighbouring property is used as a clubhouse by an outlaw motorcycle gang.
The development follows months of drive-by shootings and fire-bombings at bikie clubhouses across the city.
The ABC has learned that insurance giant GIO has written to the owners of six warehouses in Techno Park Drive, Williamstown, telling them their insurance cover will not be renewed while the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang occupies one of the properties.
The owner of the warehouse rented to the Comancheros would not comment when approached by the ABC, but it is understood that he did not know his tenants were members of an outlaw motorcycle gang until after they moved in.
The owner has tried unsuccessfully to evict the bikies, but is now trying to sell the property, triggering a clause that would force the Comancheros to move out.
A spokesman for GIO confirmed that the company had told the property owners that their insurance would not be renewed unless the bikies were evicted, because it was now considered too risky to insure the properties.
The insurer acted after somebody emailed them in October to warn them that the Comancheros were renting the property.
GIO originally set a deadline of 4:00pm (AEDT) today for the coverage to cease, but that was subsequently extended to next Friday to give owners time to consider their options.
The Comancheros are considered one of Australia's big four bikie clubs, along with the Rebels, Hells Angels and Bandidos.
There was an explosion of violence in October between the Hells Angels and Comancheros.
A gym and tattoo parlour linked to the Comancheros' Victorian president, Mick Murray, were sprayed with bullets, while the Hells Angels' "Darkside" chapter clubhouse at Seaford was also the target of a drive-by shooting.
There have also been attacks on other bikie gangs' clubhouses this year, including the Bandidos at Dandenong and the Rock Machine at Clayton South. The small Rock Machine chapter has since been absorbed by the Bandidos.
After the Bandidos clubhouse was shot up and bombed in July, insurance company CHU Underwriting Agencies told business owners in the surrounding industrial estate that it would not renew their common insurance policy.
The owners corporation at that estate wrote to the Bandidos asking them to move out and the bikie club later did.
The Comancheros Williamstown clubhouse has not been shot at or bombed, but a senior member of the chapter, Faafatia Faaloia, was shot and wounded on the Mornington Peninsula earlier this year.
Know more? Email: investigations@abc.net.au
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, crime, insurance, williamstown-3016, vic, australia
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