Former RSL NSW state president Don Rowe has been charged with fraud following a two-year police investigation.
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The 70-year-old met with detectives at Armidale police station on Wednesday morning and was charged with two counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception.
He's due to face Downing Centre Local Court on March 7.
Current state president James Brown says it's "important" that Rowe has been charged.
"Our members and the public who support the RSL want to see those who have misused charitable funds held accountable," he tweeted on Wednesday.
Gerroa’s Glenn Kolomeitz, the former NSW RSL boss responsible for lifting the lid on the league’s financial scandals, said charges being laid was “another step on the road to recovery for the RSL in NSW”.
“It validates all the effort and sacrifice made by a number of people to get the league back on mission whilst some in the organisation were still in denial that wrongdoing may have occurred,” Mr Kolomeitz told the Mercury.
“The matter is before the courts so any preemption of guilt or otherwise is inappropriate.
“What this does, however, is instil in the public greater confidence that the RSL is a charity they can again trust.”
Strikeforce Whitbread was set up in late 2016 to investigate reports of misappropriation of funds within the NSW RSL.
Since then detectives have conducted a massive forensic accounting analysis of the charity's books.
Rowe admitted using the RSL's money for his own purposes during a 2017 public inquiry led by former NSW Supreme Court judge Patricia Bergin SC.
The inquiry was established by the NSW government after an audit found Rowe withdrew $200,000 in cash and used his corporate credit card to pay for $38,000 in phone bills during his 11-year reign as president which ended in 2014.
Rowe told the inquiry he received an annual $20,000 car allowance and he used a portion of that to pay off his mortgage.
He also agreed he used his RSL credit card to pay for family members' telephone bills, flights and, on at least one occasion, for his daughter to stay in a city hotel suite paid for by the charity.
Rowe in September 2017 told the inquiry he didn't spend the organisation's money on personal expenses deliberately.
"I didn't believe it was wrong," he said.
"I accept now it was wrong."
- AAP, Andrew Pearson
