Tony Abbott met with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi not long before a bribery case there against two Australian businessmen was reversed, a report says.
The prime minister secretly met with Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan just 12 days before Australians Matthew Joyce and Marcus Lee were acquitted, The Australian reported on Tuesday.
Mr Abbott discussed his concerns about the case when he met Sheik Mohammed in Abu Dhabi on October 30 on the way back from a visit to Afghanistan.
The meeting was not disclosed at the time, the newspaper says.
The prime minister's office declined to comment about the meeting.
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The Dubai Court of Appeal on Sunday acquitted Mr Joyce on fraud-related charges for which he was sentenced to a decade in prison and fined $25 million in May.
The court also dismissed an appeal against the previous acquittal handed to Mr Lee, Mr Joyce's former colleague.
The men spent nine months in prison, followed by more than three-and-a-half years under effective house arrest.
Previous Labor governments had made repeated appeals to the UAE government over the fate of the men.
Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser also went into bat for the businessmen.
