Damien Mantach's fall from grace

DAMIEN MANTACH: HOW A SENIOR LIBERAL PARTY FIGURE FELL FROM GRACE

* Quietly removed as Tasmanian Liberal Party director in 2008 after having to repay $47,981 in personal expenses on party credit card

* Becomes Victorian state director after 2010 election win, begins sending fake invoices to the party

* Quits as state director in January 2015 after diverting $1,558,913 from party coffers using 53 fake invoices for work that was never done

* Charged with 44 counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception, he is taken into custody in November 2015

* Pleads guilty to the fraud charges in February 2016

* Wife Jodie - for whom he bought a cafe with more than $600,000 of the stolen money - left him the day after he admitted the fraud to party investigators

* He told police she "actually only asked a few questions about it on a couple of occasions and then busied herself spending"

* Victorian and federal parliaments paid some of Mantach's fraudulent printing bills, through MPs' electorate printing allowances

* He told police: "It was never actually about greed, it was never about, you know, going off and getting a whole heap of lovely materialistic things"

* Jailed for five years with a non-parole period of two years and eight months