A New Zealand man whose family believed he'd been dead for nearly 30 years has contacted them.
Francis Edward Strange, 56, told his family he's being held in custody in Kenya accused of stealing $63 million from a mining company, according to The New Zealand Herald.
He says he was detained last February after failing to scrape together the $15,000 required for bail.
Strange told Kenya's High Court that a convicted murderer had tried to kill him in jail twice, and he was "lucky" when other inmates saved his life, when he appealed against his bail conditions.
He is now on bail with strict conditions, five months after his appeal. His bail bond was eventually reduced to just $1500, despite fears that he was a flight risk.
Bail conditions include surrendering his passport, and living in the capital, Nairobi.
He's due back in court today to face allegations he stole equipment and gold from a mining company in Narok County, the Herald reports.
If Strange is found guilty, he faces seven years in jail.
Strange immigrated to Australia in 1981 and is originally from Paeroa.
The last contact his family had was in 1990, when he was living in Sydney. He moved to Tokyo in 1992.
"I love my family. But my family is a little conservative. I wanted to do something where I could make a major difference," he told the Herald from his Nairobi apartment yesterday.
He called his mother, Liz Simpson, a fortnight ago,
"We'd all assumed he was dead," she said, and though it may have been some sort of scam so asked her other son, Gerard Strange, to investigate.
"We hadn't heard from Francis for nearly 30 years," Gerard Strange said. "To get this out of the blue, we thought it was a scam.
"I talked to him and tried to ascertain, through asking some questions that only he'd know the answers to. I said to him, 'We don't know if this is you or not. It could be any English-speaking person, really.'
"He sounded very calm. It was almost an everyday talk. I guess the difference was so many years going past, and me trying to pick was it his voice.
"He said a couple of things that I'd forgotten about, too, and so I rang my mum back and said I was pretty sure it was kosher."
To back up his story, Francis Strange sent his family a long email detailing his case.
He told them if he wins his court case, he plans to stay in Kenya and go ahead with plans to develop a mine.
"We are going to build a mining city," he said.
"Everybody knows that Kenya needs investment. Kenya needs jobs. There's a lot of people who want to see this happen. But it really is dog-eat-dog here."
It could generate between 300,000 and 500,000 jobs during its construction over the next decade, Strange thinks.
Two years ago, In January 2014, he moved from Japan, where he was a teacher at an English language school, to Kenya - for a promising business venture in mining, but says the move turned "sour".
Strange and his business associate Samuel Paino were arrested in late 2014 charged with breaking into the mine and stealing equipment and gold worth $63 million.
He claims he was wrongly accused in "a world of greed and manipulation". He had taken legal action against Mboe Sambu Resources Ltd in April 2014, claiming it was operating without a licence.
He also told the Herald of his "horror experiences" inside an overcrowded Kisii GK Prison, where he says he was one of only two white prisoners.
The "horror experiences" both include what he says were murder attempted by a convicted killer, once in the shower area, then again in the TV room in June last year.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told the Herald it was made aware of Strange's arrest and detention last year and continues to give him consular assistance.
"Our previous assistance included a visit to detention by our honorary consul in Kenya to check on Mr Strange's wellbeing and attending a court hearing in an observer capacity," she said.
MFAT says it had no hand in getting the Kenyan courts to reduce Strange's bail.
"The New Zealand Government does not intervene in the judicial proceedings of another country, and this includes not intervening on the setting of bail and court fines."
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