A South African national who lured an Australian by pretending he was in a position to sell 40kg of gold to him, a fact he knew to be false, was on Friday detained.

Tshepang Godfrey Sidumo had fled Kenya in 2018 when he was first charged with the offense was arraigned in Nairobi and charged with obtaining Sh10 million by false pretenses.

According to court documents, the suspect obtained $97,500 from Nashwan Kamal.

Kamal is a businessman who deals with buying and selling gold and when he arrived in Kenya, he was booked into a Nairobi hotel where he spent the night with Sidumo on February 11, 2018.

The next day, Kamal said Sidumo took him to Deeds Company Limited on Gatanga Road where he performed a pure gold test on the merchandise, and indeed the results showed he was to buy pure gold.

Kamal agreed to purchase 40kg from Sidumo but he never received the consignment, prompting him to report the fraud to the police.

The prosecution told the court that the accused should be denied bail as he has another file at city court and they need to review it before he is released.

Sidumo allegedly jumped bail in the matter before a city court and has been missing since 2018.

He denied the charges before Milimani chief magistrate Martha Mutuku on Friday and ordered the suspect to be remanded in custody until April 13, for the court to peruse his file.