Damien Carew is currently languishing in a French jail awaiting trial, leaving his mother Wendy frustrated at the country’s justice system and lack of information about her son’s plight.

Mr Carew was arrested in April after local authorities alleged he assaulted his wife, Anna Polianskaya-Carew, at the villa the couple shared in La Turbie on the French Riviera.

It is alleged she was so badly injured that Mr Carew called an ambulance after the incident, with his wife then rushed to hospital where she was put in an induced coma.

Mr Carew was out on bail at the time of the alleged assault.

He is also facing separate serious money laundering charges which were brought by an elite French crime-fighting force in 2021.

“The French treat Australian citizens like dirt,” Wendy Carew said.

“You are guilty until proven innocent. It’s crazy, it’s the opposite of here, it’s like China.

“You can’t speak to anybody.”

She lashed out at the lengthy summer holidays taken by officials in the French judicial system.

“He is on remand waiting for the judge to come back, that’s all I know,” she said. “I have no information at all. It is just shattering.”

Mrs Carew said she had not spoken to her son for three months because of the harsh rules of the prison, the Maison d’Arret in Nice, where he is being held.

“When you go to jail in France there is no phone, no internet, no contact with anybody at all,” she said.

“I have had one letter in four months.

“I have not even spoken to my son for three months whatever. I can’t get on with my life because people keep bringing it up.”

Her main concern was the health of her daughter-in-law, Polianskaya-Carew, who has since recovered and is staying with her family in Monaco.

Damien Carew, who attended Melbourne private school St Kevin’s College, met Ms Polianskaya-Carew on a beach in Greece while he was working in real estate in Dubai in the early 2010s.

The couple married in 2013 in a lavish ceremony held at the luxurious Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in the south of France before setting up home in nearby La Turbie.

Mr Carew had a real estate business in nearby Monaco, a coastal microstate famous for its billionaires, yachts and zero income tax rate.

He first came to the attention of French authorities after being found drunk and injured on a Paris street with nearly 200,000 euros cash ($335,00) in his carry bag.

Further investigation by the top French crime fighting team, Junalco, which was set up in 2019 to investigate serious crimes including money laundering, drug running and human trafficking, allegedly uncovered an additional 160,000 euros ($275,000) in a Paris Airbnb where Mr Carew had been staying.

They also claim to have uncovered suspect transactions of over 4 million euros ($6.75m) linked to mr Carew throughout 2021.

When contacted about Mr Carew’s lengthy stint in the Nice prison, with no court date yet set, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said they had offered consular assistance.

“The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has offered consular assistance to an Australian man arrested in France, and his family,” a DFAT spokesperson said.