A former banker jailed over the worst insider trading scheme in Australia paid just $20,000 to the accomplice who helped him net $7 million.

Lukas James Kamay, 26, used market sensitive data provided by Australian Bureau of Statistics worker Christopher Russell Hill to conduct more than 45 stock exchange trades over eight months in 2013 and 2014.

Kamay then attempted to cover his crime in “a cloak of respectability” by purchasing a $2.375 million apartment that had been renovated on the television show The Block.

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In the Victorian Supreme Court on Tuesday, Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth said the carefully planned and pre-meditated crime was the worst example of insider trading to come before the courts.

“The gross profit that you made is, by a very considerable margin, the largest insider trading profit to come before an Australian court,” Justice Hollingworth told Kamay.

Hill, who was jailed for three years and three months for his role, was unaware of the extent of Kamay’s trading.

He was paid just $13,000 in December 2013, and a further $6,500 the following April, for the information he gave Kamay, who first floated the idea at a birthday party in May 2013.

As Hill understood the plan, the pair would trade for a year, incurring deliberate losses to mimic a normal trading pattern, to earn a profit of $50,000 each after tax.

Hill pleaded guilty to four charges of abuse of public office, one of insider trading and one of identity theft and was ordered to serve a non-parole period of two years.

Kamay, who pleaded guilty to six charges of insider trading, one of money laundering and two of identity theft, has been jailed for seven years and three months.

He must serve four years and six months before being eligible for parole.

Justice Hollingworth said they had acted out of self-interest and had most likely thrown away promising careers.

“For both of you, your motivation for committing these offences was personal greed, pure and simple,” Justice Hollingworth said.

Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the arrest and conviction of an ABS officer for an unauthorised disclosure of statistics was unprecedented in the ABS’s 110-year history.

The sentence demonstrates such a breach of trust will not go undetected or unpunished.

“It also sends a clear message about the importance and emphasis that our enforcement agencies place on maintaining market integrity,” he said in a statement.

-AAP