"We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on," Sunland's Dubai boss, Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, told The Sunday Times in London. "This is the kind of luxury that top people want."

That was December 2008. But in the previous few months, the global financial crisis had already pricked Dubai's six-year-old, extremely bloated property bubble. In the next months, the heat would well and truly be sucked out of the emirate's real estate market, though not – as Abedian had hoped – its sand. When Sunland abandoned its refrigerated beach project on environmental grounds in July 2009, Abedian admitted: "The idea, as good as it sounded at the time, is not right for today."

He might say as much now about another patch of sand in Dubai, known as Plot D17. Sunland had a grand vision for D17 after buying the block in late 2007. It proposed the Atrium, a residential tower sculpted in glass, its two legs meeting in a spectacular parabolic formation before rising to its full 68 storeys. Today those plans are dashed and D17 remains nothing but sand. The ruins of this project are human and mainly Australian, in that:

- Abedian's and Sunland's reputation have been mauled in an Australian court, where a judge threw out Sunland's claim that two Australian developers, Matthew Joyce and Angus Reed, had duped it into paying a $12 million-plus "consultancy fee" so it could buy D17; and the judge also accused Sunland of bringing the case for an ulterior purpose;

- Joyce and another Australian, his former colleague Marcus Lee, remain under house arrest in Dubai, more than four years after they were arrested following the testimony of Sunland executive David Brown;

- Brown has admitted that critical parts of that testimony were false;

- Sunland now says, as far as it is concerned, Lee did nothing wrong.

But Sunland is also tired of being cast as the bad guy in this story, as the company that concocted a conspiracy theory to save its own skin while condemning two innocent men. It insists it remains the victim of a property fraud.

On Monday, when the case returns to court in Dubai, Sunland will also be back in court in Melbourne. In the Court of Appeal, it says it will argue the Supreme Court judge Clyde Croft – when dismissing its civil action against Matt Joyce and Angus Reed – gave too little weight to the separate criminal prosecution in Dubai and one of its central allegations: that more than $12 million of Sunland's money was split between bank accounts linked to Joyce and Reed, who were Geelong Grammar schoolmates. Just more than $6 million allegedly went into Joyce's Jersey account in the Channel Islands.

Joyce, however, alleges Sunland has supplied Fairfax Media a "doctored and misleading" prosecution document.

Another Geelong Grammar old boy, Prince Charles, has personally joined a campaign to free Joyce and Lee. A rush of diplomatic efforts has included Foreign Minister Bob Carr and former prime minister Malcolm Fraser. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has spoken to Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

Joyce took his wife, Angela Higgins, and their children to Dubai in 2006. Here he would become managing director of a $40 billion development, Dubai Waterfront. An offshoot of Dubai's government-owned master developer, Nakheel, it was the biggest waterfront development in the world.

Lee, who also arrived that year with his wife, Julie, would become the project's head of commercial operations.

Soon the Melbourne-based Reed and his company, Prudentia, would seek opportunities in Dubai. And Sunland, a developer based on the Gold Coast – where it has built another Palazzo Versace hotel – was scouting for fresh prospects in Dubai.

Prudentia had been looking at D17, a plot on Dubai Waterfront. This is where the Australians' stories clash. Sunland claims Reed and Joyce misled it to believe that Prudentia had development rights over D17. If Sunland wanted to buy it from Dubai Waterfront – ultimately, Nakheel – it alleges it was told that it would first need to deal with Prudentia.

Prudentia and Sunland originally discussed a joint venture. However, late in September 2007, Sunland instead agreed to pay Prudentia to walk away from the deal, so it alone could buy the site from Nakheel for 192 million dirhams, or more than $50 million.

Sunland refers, at this point, to an April 2009 report by the Financial Audit Department of the Ruler's Court. The report says Prudentia had no claim over the site, so nothing to sell. However, on October 1, 2007, Sunland had paid a Prudentia subsidiary Dhs44,105,780 as a "consultancy fee". It converts that to "about" $12 million. It says Joyce's cut was Dhs22.1 million.

The report, by audit department director Mohammed Mustafa, then breaks down the alleged split into bank accounts in Australian dollars: $5,693,340.72 to a Hong Kong account of the Prudentia subsidiary, $973,957.87 to Prudentia in Australia, and $6,000,786.39 to the account of Eightblue Limited in Jersey, which it links to Joyce.

In a statement from Dubai, Joyce responded to Fairfax Media: "The copy of the April 2009 Mustafa report which has been given to you by Sunland has been doctored and several other Australian journalists have had a copy of it for some time now – I don't intend to comment on a doctored and misleading document, particularly in light of the fact that the Court of Appeal begins hearing Sunland's appeal [on] Monday.

"It's important to remember that the Supreme Court of Victoria held that two of Sunland's senior executives could not be regarded as reliable witnesses of truth and that one of them was a 'consistently unco-operative witness and clearly prepared to give evidence in a manner which he saw as being advantageous to Sunland's commercial interests in Dubai'. "

A Prudentia spokesman echoed Joyce's remarks and accused Fairfax Media of knowingly using "improperly doctored versions of documents predicated on discredited evidence".

A Sunland spokeswoman replied: "It's fanciful. The document is the basis on which [Joyce] is being tried in Dubai."

In its closing submission to its civil case in Victoria, Sunland highlighted the evidence from Dubai that Prudentia paid "50 per cent of the amount received from Sunland into Joyce's family trust's bank account in the tax haven of Jersey”. Now the Sunland spokeswoman says: "This audit report is the basis upon which Sunland commenced its civil claim in Australia. That it was not properly considered in the Australian civil case is one of the grounds upon which Sunland lodged its appeal of the civil case that begins [on Monday]."

Mustafa has stated that Lee did not receive any money. It was Lee's job to prepare an internal board report in relation to several plots, including D17. Sunland would pay Dubai Waterfront Dhs120 "per aerial foot". That was way undervalued, according to the audit report, which says similar properties were fetching Dhs185 per aerial foot. So the Dubai government, as well as Sunland, was allegedly defrauded.

And yet the audit report notes that this deal was approved not only by Joyce but by Nakheel's sales executive manager and by Joyce's ultimate boss, Chris O'Donnell, yet another Australian who was then Nakheel's chief executive. O'Donnell would later back his original judgment, telling the Ruler's Court that it was a fair price.

O'Donnell oversaw Nakheel's spectacular projects, including the signature Palm Jumeirah and The World. But he was also there for the spectacular collapse in the property market. At the Palm Jumeirah, the price of villas and apartments dropped by as much as 60 per cent in a few months. Nakheel would almost go broke with debts of $16 billion. It was forced to abandon projects.

Dubai's reputation as a magnet for international investors was in jeopardy. The government was determined to restore the faith and to clean up any taint of fraud. Many accused perpetrators were rounded up. Others fled the country.

It was in December 2008 – when Abedian was talking up the refrigerated beach – that Mustafa called in Brown, Sunland's chief operations officer in Dubai, for a series of interviews.

On January 26, 2009, Australia Day, Joyce and Lee were arrested. They spent the next nine months in prison, some of it in solitary confinement, before their release on bail. Reed, too, was charged but he had already returned to Australia, so he is being tried in absentia, as is another Australian, former Nakheel lawyer Anthony Brearley. Reed has said that he and Prudentia always acted with integrity.

It must be noted that the audit report is four years old. Last year, the Ruler's Court ordered an expert review of the prosecution case, saying the evidence did not match the charges. Precisely what part of the evidence was lacking was not clear. The review was supposed to be delivered to the court on Thursday but, after missing several deadlines, it was yet again not ready. The judge asked that it be delivered by Monday. There is no guarantee this will happen.

But Sunland is confident that the mismatched evidence does not concern the alleged money trail. In a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange on March 20, it repeated its previous claims about Sunland's "$14 million payment" to Prudentia and Joyce's alleged "$7 million" cut, and that "no satisfactory explanation has been given for the receipts".

Most of the reporting on this case has worked with that $14 million figure. Perhaps the exchange rate conversion was done at a different time, without having sighted the audit department's numbers.

Much is lost in translation in this saga.

Justice Croft's version, though, is unambiguous. He called it a "non-existent fraud". He called Brown's and Abedian's evidence unreliable. He ruled that Joyce and Reed never did mislead Sunland about Prudentia's supposed hold on D17.

Rather, in the "hot" property market, Sunland had been desperate to secure D17 and was eager to pay Prudentia to "walk away". Brown had made the false allegations after realising that he, too, was under investigation for bribery. Sunland, the judge found, had persisted with its false claims "in wilful disregard of known facts and law and also for an ulterior purpose". It was "safeguarding its and Brown's position in Dubai".

Under cross-examination in Melbourne, Brown made a succession of admissions that claims he made to the Dubai prosecutors were incorrect. It was not Joyce, after all, who originally told him about D17; it was Nakheel's director of planning and development, Jeff Austin. He had claimed that Reed made an unsolicited call to try to sell him the plot, but now Brown admitted he was the one who called Reed.

In August 2007, before the D17 deal was finalised, Brown sent Joyce an email: "Thanks Matt, I got your message and yes Soheil is aware that Prudentia are still in negotiations with Nakheel and have not purchased the site. Jeff [Austin] and Anthony [Brearley] have also made this clear. The fact they have not purchased D17 yet is better because [it will] allow us and Prudentia to agree to JV [joint venture] terms before we proceed to buy the site."

In that email, Brown also wrote: "I have informed Soheil of your prior relationship with Prudentia and your desire not to get involved."

Brown would also admit in the civil case he had been told he could get the same deal on D17 by dealing directly with Nakheel.

Reed's barrister, Jack Rush, QC, challenged Brown: “I suggest . . . that the [Ruler's] court wanted a conviction and the prosecutor had to get one. That's what they told you. You wrote that, didn't you?”

Brown said: “They did tell us that, yes.” Indeed, his diary had recorded: “It was quite clear to me that they are convinced they must obtain a conviction, they don't have any other option, and I said I was here to assist them.”

As Fairfax Media revealed in 2010, Sunland misled the ASX three times by claiming it and Brown had never been investigated in the case. In fact, the Dubai prosecution originally identified Brown as one of the "accused" – for having allegedly paid a bribe – although it later changed his status to "victim". Justice Croft referred this matter to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which confirms it has "assessed" it but "does not comment on ongoing cases".

Abedian admitted in court that James Packer, a former Sunland director, demanded the immediate liquidation of the company when the full extent of the Dubai bribery investigation emerged.

Packer quit the board days later, in August 2009, and sold his 11 per cent stake in the company.

Sunland has a lot at stake in this week's appeal. Its costs are already believed to exceed $6 million. While it says the Financial Audit Department report was the foundation of its civil case in Australia, it also says the document demonstrates that the fraud prosecution is not Sunland's case, but that of the Dubai government.

Its statement to the ASX says repeated claims that the Australian judge has found Joyce and Lee "innocent" are misinformed and incorrect. While Sunland makes no claim against Lee, it says his "innocence or otherwise is a matter for the Dubai criminal courts".

However, Lee's lawyer, John Sneddon, says Sunland and Brown have refused repeated requests to correct his statements to the Dubai authorities that form the substance of the charges against Lee. Snedden said that Abedian had also admitted on national television last month that Sunland did not believe Lee was involved.

Sunland, denying claims that its executives have been summoned to court in Dubai, says: "Mr Brown has already given evidence in the Dubai proceedings and has nothing to add to this evidence."