A former NAB banker and an Australian Bureau of Statistics worker have pleaded guilty to conspiring in one of the biggest insider trading cases in Australian history, worth $7 million.
Lukas Kamay, 26, and Christopher Hill, 24, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday charged with insider trading, conspiracy and money laundering.
Hill pleaded guilty to six criminal charges, including one count of bribery of a commonwealth public official.
Kamay entered similar pleas, but pleaded not guilty to money laundering allegations. He now faces trial in the Supreme Court.
Kamay, who in April purchased a $2.4 million Albert Park apartment from the reality TV show The Block, will dispute claims he dealt with proceeds of crime, money or property worth $1 million or more.
The property and $6.5 million from bank accounts were seized by police after Kamay's arrest in May.
New details emerged at the court appearance of the scheme that saw $7 million reaped in illegal foreign exchange trades.
According to a statement tendered by the police, the scheme began as a plan to make $200,000 from market sensitive information but led to Kamay concealing millions more in accounts not known to Hill.
Documents reveal the friends hatched the scheme at various gatherings in May last year, including a dinner in Fitzroy and a party in Rye, on the Mornington Peninsula.
Under the arrangement, 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.
In phone and text message conversations intercepted by police, Kamay discussed buying the property that appeared in The Block in text messages with an undisclosed number.
"Do you watch the block?" he texted. "Cos I want to buy one of them."
He said the property was "good value" at under $2.3 million.
"I'm calling [the] agent tomorrow ... It comes fully furnished."
Phone conversations also show how Kamay warned Hill about keeping ill-gotten money in bank accounts.
"When you get a place you should furnish it out with cash. That's what you should be doing ... Just f---ing cash it all."
Kamay, a budding entrepreneur who had begun speaking to accounting and commerce students at his former university, kept the true value of his trade profits hidden from the younger Hill.
In a confession to police, he admitted he kept between $6 million and $7 million in secret accounts.
Australian Federal Police arrested the two men in May after a sting that included monitoring phone conversations and trades conducted by Kamay through a Melbourne-based broker, Pepperstone Financial.
Pepperstone reported the trades to the corporate regulator when it became suspicious of Kamay's motives.
Kamay and Mr Hill met at Monash University in 2007 where they both studied for commerce degrees.
The two men will both appear in the Supreme Court on October 1 for a directions hearing.
