Fears have been raised for the welfare of two Australian men who have been detained in Dubai for four years on corruption charges after a property deal turned sour.
Marcus Lee and Matthew Joyce are accused of fraud against their former employer, a property development company owned by the emir of Dubai.
In a parallel legal case in Australia, the principals of the property developer that reported the pair to the Dubai authorities were found to be not telling the truth.
The chairman of that Queensland-based company now admits that, at least in the case of Lee, his company's allegations are not true.
Joyce and Lee were arrested in January 2009 as the building boom in the Gulf state went bust during the global financial crisis.
They spent seven weeks in solitary confinement in a police lock-up and were kept in jail another four months before they learnt about the corruption charges against them.
Their wives had to surrender their passports to secure their husbands' bail. They are still not allowed to leave Dubai.
Lawyer John Sneddon says he is "very concerned for their welfare".
"I've watched my clients deteriorate remarkably over the course of the four years that I've been involved in this case," he said.
"Their condition is terrible, really. Both Marcus and his wife Julie are in a very bad financial and medical situation.
"They've had to sell everything they own and their health has obviously suffered immensely having spent four years in this pressure cooker that they're in at the moment in Dubai."
Lee and Joyce blame their predicament on evidence provided to the Dubai authorities by Gold Coast developer group Sunland.
Its executive chairman, Soheil Abedian is unapologetic.
"I really feel sorry for the family. I think that their family, they don't deserve what has happened to them," he says.
"[But] I believe any single individual that is in any foreign jurisdiction and is involved in any kind of business, they should uphold the law of that country."
In 2006 Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum dreamed of transforming Dubai into a tourist mecca through his development company, Nakheel.
Joyce was in charge of a Nakheel subsidiary called Dubai Waterfront; Lee was his commercial director.
