Mom and Matticks among those charged in biker sweep

One of the alleged gang members rounded up on Wednesday was Gerry Matticks of Montreal's notorious west-end gang.

Matticks and his brother Richard were arrested and put on trial in 1994. The botched trial led to the Poitras inquiry into Sret du Qubec activities.

The commission found the provincial police had employed intimidation within its own ranks and manufactured evidence.

Biggest ever

Police are calling Wednesday's crackdown on Quebec biker gangs the most important police operation in Canadian history.

They've arrested approximately 120 people with links to all levels of the the Hells Angels motorcycle gang.

Police have arrested the upper ranks of the Hells Angels, and have seized homes and property. Police called the raids "opration printemps" and say it was a spring cleanup.

Some 2,000 police officers from the Sret du Qubec, the RCMP and 23 municipal departments were involved in the bust.

Money-making operation

SQ spokesperson Michel Martin says the biker gang's operation is huge.

"Our investigation leads us to believe that they were generating in the past year a few hundred of millions of dollars in profits," Martin says.

Martin says police have made a dent in the illegal operations of the Hells Angels. Maurice "Mom" Boucher, the head of an elite chapter of the Hells Angels, is named in connection with 13 murders and three attempted murders.

Arrest warrants were also issued for 40 other high ranking Hells Angels members. Boucher is already behind bars, but Public Security Minister Serge Mnard says police arrested the rest of the group on Wednesday.

"The nomad group was the most dangerous," says Mnard. "It was the group of Mr. Boucher himself."

Mnard congratulates police for their professionalism and says keeping such a large operation under wraps was a difficult task.

Click here to read the Quebec government's press release on Opration Printemps (in French only)