Melbourne-born real estate entrepreneur Damien Carew is at the centre of an investigation by powerful French law enforcement agency Junalco over suspicions he has moved about €4m - almost $7m - a year.

A wide-ranging News Corp investigation stretching from Monaco to Dubai and the Mornington Peninsula has revealed the secret life and downfall of the former student at exclusive private boys’ school St Kevin’s College, as he sits in a jail cell in Nice on the French Riviera facing money laundering and attempted murder charges.

In April, the Herald Sun reported that Mr Carew had been charged with attempting to murder his Russian-born wife and it can now be revealed that French authorities have charged him with aggravated money laundering as part of a broader investigation into an alleged criminal group.

He faces up to 10 years in jail if he is convicted of the money laundering charge.

Mr Carew’s downfall from global high flyer to inmate can be traced back to one drunken night on a Paris street in late 2021 when he was found on the side of a street by local firefighters with the equivalent of almost $335,000 cash in his bag.

“Carew was picked up injured and in a drunken state by the pompiers,” a source with knowledge of the investigation said.

“They called in the police. The police later went to the apartment in the north of Paris where Carew was staying and found a further €160,000 in cash there.”

“French police established that in the course of 2021 Carew handled around €4m through his accounts or in cash.

“French investigators say he was extremely evasive during questioning.”

Paris authorities confirmed they have charged Mr Carew.

“I can inform you that the person concerned has been charged with aggravated money laundering and conspiracy to commit an offence punishable by 10 years’ imprisonment,” a French judicial source said.

It can now be revealed that Carew was held in jail over the money laundering charge for a year and then was allowed to return to his home in the village of La Turbie, outside Monaco, wearing an ankle bracelet.

There he lived with his wife Anna Polianskaya-Carew and their two children until the alleged attack in April.

Ms Polianskaya-Carew, who grew up in Monaco, was put in a coma by doctors following the alleged attack but it can be revealed that while she has not fully recovered from the ordeal she has regained consciousness and been discharged from hospital.

A family member said the Carews’ two young children were in the care of Ms Polianskaya-Carew’s mother, Margarita.

The couple married in 2013 at the luxurious Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild after meeting on a beach in Greece.

When News Corp visited La Turbie, one of Carew’s neighbours, who asked to be known only as Any, said she was shocked to hear of the attempted murder charge.

She never heard arguments or fights but weeks before the April incident she bumped into Carew in the local pharmacy where he lifted a trouser leg to reveal a prison ankle tag.

“I didn’t want to pry and ask why he had been in prison, we live a quiet life here, we don’t like trouble,” she said.

Ms Polianskaya-Carew’s younger sister, who works at a hotel near Antibe, said she has not spoken to Anna for “some time” and did not visit her when she was in a coma in Pasteur Hospital in Nice.

“My mum has got the care of the children, I’m not talking to my sister, I haven’t for some time but my mum says she’s doing better,” she said.

“She’s rebuilding her life. She hadn’t been doing very well and is still a little fragile but she is piecing her life back together.”

Monaco and the south of France are major money laundering hubs, especially popular with rich Russians and oligarchs attempting to evade sanctions slapped on them after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The area is one of the key hunting grounds for Junalco, an elite unit based in Paris that was set up in 2019 to investigate extremely complex cases of organised crime including large-scale money laundering and fraud rings, human trafficking and drug and gun running.