Two men involved in a $7 million insider trading scheme where the mastermind bought an apartment from The Block television show to give his crimes a "cloak of respectability" have been jailed. Former NAB banker Luke Kamay and former Australian Bureau of Statistics employee Christopher Hill had been involved in the worst case of insider trading to come before the courts in Australia, said Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth. Justice Hollingworth said Kamay had first floated the insider trading idea, which was enthusiastically embraced by Hill. Hill had abused his position as a Commonwealth public official by deliberately accessing the ABS database, the judge said, copying by hand highly confidential, embargoed information and then passing it on to Kamay. ABS staff later needed counselling to try to cope with Hill's gross breach of trust. "Personal greed, pure and simple," was the motiviation for the offense, the judge said. The pair had almost certainly thrown away promising careers by their actions. Kamay, 26, of Eaglemont, was jailed for seven years and three months with a non-parole period of four years and six months, after pleading guilty to insider trading, money laundering and identity theft charges between August 2013 and May 2014. Hill, 25, of Brighton, who had met Kamay at Monash University in 2007 where they both studied for commerce and economics degrees, was jailed for three years and three months with a non-parole period of two years after pleading guilty to insider trading, identity theft and abuse of public office charges. The pair had decided to set up the scheme during a meeting at a Fitzroy North pub in 2013 with the aim of making a $200,000 profit in a year to split between them. Hill agreed to use his position at the ABS headquarters in Canberra to send Kamay employment, trade and retail figures moments before they were released to the market. Kamay, based at NAB in Melbourne, used the data to make trades on currency markets based on which direction the Australian dollar was expected to go. The plan went awry when Kamay began making so much money he decided to set up three secret trading accounts without telling Hill and ended up making more than $7.2 million. Hill pocketed a total of $19,500 in cash. He spent $10,000 and police later seized $9500 they found in his apartment. Kamay later successfully bid $2,375,000 at auction for the three-bedroom Albert Park loft, designed by twins Alisa and Lysandra Fraser on The Block, on April 8, 2014. Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Bromwich, SC, said Kamay did not conceal his identity when buying the apartment because the purchase gave his crimes "a cloak of respectability". Kamay's $237,500 deposit was later seized and the apartment re-sold. Kamay and Hill were arrested in May after a four-month joint Australian Federal Police and ASIC investigation following a tip-off from a stockbroker about the link between the pair. Kamay claimed he was driven and pushed by the culture at the NAB at the time to make money and be successful which, in the end, consumed him.
Reported by Brisbane Times 4 hours ago.
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