used as a headquarters by the Bandidos. The club was evicted from the premises in 2013. Police in Sweden believe that the Bandidos Motorcycle Club makes money primarily through illegal activities, including drug offenses, violent crimes, protection activities, robberies, extortion, weapons offenses, illegal gambling, money laundering and other economic crimes. According to a police report from 2018, 88% of Bandidos members in the country are convicted criminals, having been convicted of a total of 2,096 crimes. The Swedish Bandidos have run extensive extortion rackets by offering restaurants and bars "protection" from other criminal gangs. The club has eight chapters in Sweden and has prominently recruited members of non-
Swedish ethnicity. Affiliates of the Bandidos in Sweden include the
Chicanos,
Diablos and
X-Team.
Establishment and initial crimes The Bandidos were established in Sweden after patching over the Morbids Motorcycle Club in
Helsingborg as a probationary chapter in January 1994. The chapter formally became full-patch Bandidos on 28 January 1995. The Morbids had previously acted as a
Hells Angels hangaround club and vied with other clubs for the right to become the Angels' first Swedish chapter; the
Malmö-based Dirty Dräggels proved victorious in that contest when they were patched over on 27 February 1993. The Morbids were later offered a path to Hells Angels membership on the condition that they merge with the Rebels, a rival club with whom they had previously clashed. Rejecting the offer, they instead aligned with the Danish Bandidos chapter. Shortly after the founding of the Helsingborg Bandidos, the Rebels – a Hells Angels support club at that point – carried out a shooting attack on the Bandidos' clubhouse. A second attack on the clubhouse was launched a week later, on 26 January 1994, when Hells Angels member
Thomas Möller fired a high-caliber submachine gun from the roof of a van, resulting in a Bandidos member losing a finger.
Nordic Biker War On 13 February 1994, fifteen Danish Bandidos members were ambushed by Hells Angels associates at a club in Helsingborg, resulting in 13 gunshots being fired and Hells Angels-affiliated Rednecks member Joakim Boman being shot dead. At least two others – Hells Angels hangaround Johnny Larsen and a Bandidos member – were wounded. On 17 July 1995, Bandidos Sweden president
Michael "Joe" Ljunggren was shot and killed while riding his motorcycle on the
E4 south of
Markaryd in
Småland. He had been returning from a meeting with the Undertakers Motorcycle Club – a Finnish club that became a Bandidos probationary chapter the following month before being patched over in October 1996 – in
Helsinki. Ljunggren's murder remains a
cold case, and there have been differing theories surrounding his killing. The Bandidos fired an anti-tank missile into the Hells Angels' clubhouse in
Hasslarp on 31 July 1995. Dan Lynge, a Danish police officer who infiltrated the club, carried out surveillance on the compound with a Swedish Bandidos prospect in the days before the attack. On 6 December 1995, a shootout involving two vehicles took place on a motorway outside Helsingborg, leaving a Hells Angels member with a leg wound. Another gunfight between two cars happened in Helsingborg on 5 March 1996, resulting in a Bandidos prospect suffering serious injuries. Bandidos Sweden president Mikael "Mike" Svensson was shot in the leg while driving near the Hells Angels' Hasslarp headquarters on 23 July 1996. His car was hit by several bullets. On 4 August 1996, a Hells Angel was injured by gunfire while driving his car in Helsingborg. On 27 August 1996, sixteen rounds were fired at the car of a Bandidos member in
Stockholm, although he was not hit. A member of the Bandidos' Helsingborg chapter was involved in a shootout outside his home on 13 January 1997 with two people who fled by car. A member of the Stockholm Hells Angels later visited a hospital with a bullet wound. The clubhouse of the Aphuset Motorcycle Club – a Bandidos support club – was bombed on 28 April 1997. A simultaneous bombing of a garage used by Bandidos supporters was also carried out. Internal pressure, as well as increased scrutiny from law enforcement and public backlash – particularly in Denmark and Norway, where innocent bystanders had been killed in attacks by bikers – brought an end to the conflict, which officially ceased on 25 September 1997 when the rival clubs established a truce. In response to the changing criminal landscape, the Bandidos formed the X-Team, a street gang whose members act as the Bandidos' foot soldiers and carry out street-level crime. Bandidos Sweden president Mehdi Seyyed was sentenced to nine years in prison on 14 January 2009 for two counts of attempted murder. He bombed two cars in
Gothenburg, on 19 and 20 September 2006, with hand grenades, in acts of revenge as the victims had previously testified against him. Four other Bandidos members received shorter sentences for their involvement in the attacks. Testimony in the case was provided by a former X-Team member whom Seyyed had previously assaulted. Andreas Olsson, president of the Stockholm Bandidos, was arrested in October 2006 after 3.6 kilograms of amphetamine were found in his backpack as he returned from
Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was sentenced to a ten-year prison sentence. Patrick Huisman, the president of the
Ludvika Bandidos and a former member of
White Aryan Resistance and the
Brödraskapet, was arrested in April 2007 and charged with extortion. He was sentenced to one year and six months in prison. In July 2007, Bandidos
Säffle chapter president Anders Gustafsson was charged with the attempted extortion of
kr500,000 from a construction company. He was sentenced in 2008 to four years in prison after being convicted of extortion and the serious assault of a man who suffered a bleed on the brain.
2010s The
Rock Machine arrived in Sweden in the early 2010s, initially forming a
nomads faction. Quickly growing in influence, the Canadian-founded club established two additional chapters and began encroaching on the territory of the established clubs in the country. A feud emerged between the Rock Machine and the Bandidos after several Bandidos members reportedly patched over to the Rock Machine. These events resulted in the Bandidos attempting to assassinate the Rock Machine Sweden president on the premises of the Rock Machine's
Klippan chapter clubhouse in September 2014; he would survive the attempt, and two members of the Bandidos in Helsingborg would be arrested and charged for attempted murder after police executed searches of the headquarters of the Bandidos the Southern Bikers MC support club. In April 2018, police discovered a haul of thirty-seven firearms – including thirteen automatic rifles – and 7,400 rounds of ammunition of various kinds, seventeen plastic explosives, forty-two sticks of dynamite, remote-controlled triggers, 131 tear gas grenades, and ten kilograms of drugs – cocaine, amphetamine, MDMA, cannabis and tramadol – in two stolen cars in a parking garage in
Skärholmen, Stockholm. Police raided the Bandidos' Stockholm chapter clubhouse on 7 November 2018 and arrested the branch vice-president Ozan Sarikaya, who was charged with drug and weapons crimes, and violation of the Flammable and Explosive Goods Act. On 2 July 2019, Sarikaya was acquitted on all counts at
Södertörn District Court. Bandidos member Aghvan Baghdasaryan, and his friends Nima Morravej and Sammy Hyväoja, were involved in a shooting of rival drug dealers in
Borlänge on 11 January 2019 that left one man dead and another wounded. Although investigators were unable to prove who fired the weapon, the trio were convicted of assisting in murder and assisting in attempted murder and were each sentenced to fourteen years in prison in October 2019. Gothenburg Bandidos president Johnson Bogere and his brother, former boxer
Patrick Bogere, fled the country when they became sought by authorities for the kidnapping and torture of two men in western Sweden. After several months on the run, the pair were apprehended in
Málaga, Spain in July 2019 and subsequently extradited to Sweden. In December 2019, Patrick Bogere was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and Johnson Bogere was sentenced to two years', while several others were also convicted in the case.
Bandidos–No Surrender gang war A gang war involving the Bandidos and
No Surrender in
Östergötland County has resulted in several bombings and shootings. The conflict reportedly began as the Bandidos acted to prevent the newly arrived No Surrender from establishing a presence in the drug market. An explosion at a residential building in
Linköping on 7 June 2019 is believed by police to be an attack by the Bandidos on a No Surrender member. Two No Surrender bikers, including a leading member, were shot dead outside a nightclub in
Norrköping on 5 December 2019. On 9 April 2020, two No Surrender members were shot in a car outside a Norrköping fast food restaurant; one was killed and the other wounded. ==Switzerland==