Businessman who went missing in Tokyo is found alive and well in Yorkshire 'after going on the run from the Japanese mafia'

Garin Dart, 41, abandoned pregnant wife and son without warning in May

Brit, who lived in Japan for a decade, withdrew £40,000 and fled country

Popular expat left wife, Yukako, 39, and four-year-old son without warning



Wealthy businessman now says Japanese mafia threats made him leave

Mr Dart says he enraged mafia by warning a friend they wanted to kill him



He claims they said they would not harm his family if he disappeared



Mr Dart is now living and working in Yorkshire but says wife is 'still angry'



British expat Garin Dart, 41, who left his pregnant wife and son in Japan in May is now living in Yorkshire and says he was threatened by Japanese mafia

A British businessman who was feared dead after he disappeared in Japan is safe and well and living in Yorkshire.

Friends of events company manager Garin Dart, 41, believed he had been kidnapped or killed when he abandoned his pregnant wife and their four-year-old son with no warning eight months ago.



Japanese and British authorities launched a manhunt for the popular ex-pat, who had lived in Tokyo for 10 years, and friends ran online and poster campaigns to find him.



But police in Tokyo dropped their investigation when they discovered he had withdrawn £40,000 from his company and left the country.

In fact, Mr Dart is alive and back in Britain after going on the run.



He claims he was forced to flee secretly after being threatened by the Japanese mafia.



Mr Dart had been a successful businessman, whose company Bluesilver put on lavish events for international businesses and the Japanese royal family. He also co-founded an aid charity in the wake of the 2011 tsunami.



His high-flying lifestyle meant he took several exotic holidays a year with wife Yukako, 39.



But his habit of frequenting five-star hotels and restaurants brought him into contact with mafia bosses.



He said: ‘We would go out drinking to bars and clubs. They would have a lot of contacts and with my contacts in the hospitality industry we would be welcomed wherever we went.



‘It was a mutually beneficial friendship.’



Mr Dart said he was aware of his friends’ backgrounds but never did business with them.



‘You go out socially with a few people and you find out there a few bad lads in the bunch, but you don’t get involved,’ he added. ‘I just took them at face value, they seemed nice.’



But his life turned upside-down when one ‘gangster’ drunkenly informed him of plans to murder another friend.



He warned the friend so he could escape, but claims he was then threatened by the gangster who had let slip the information.



‘He said he would kill me and hurt my pregnant wife and son,’ he said.



‘It was terrifying. I feared something would happen to my family and I knew I was in trouble.’



Abandoned: Mr Dart left his pregnant wife Yukako, 39, left, and four-year-old son, pictured, in May Family he left behind: Garin Dart, pictured with his wife and elder son, enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle in Japan

Mr Dart kept his ordeal from his friends and family while he offered the mafia £30,000 to drop the threats.



He withdrew £40,000 from his business, keeping £10,000 aside ‘just in case’.



But when he handed the cash over, he claimed the mafia made further threats and warned him to ‘disappear’.



He said: ‘I couldn’t go to the police, it wouldn’t have helped.



‘If the mafia say they will kill you, they will. But if they say you are safe, you are safe.



‘When they said they would leave my family alone if I disappeared, I believed them.’



Mr Dart fled to Thailand the same day wearing only a t-shirt and jeans, without a word to his wife or business partners.



‘The biggest mistake I made was I didn’t get in contact with anybody,’ he said. ‘If I was thinking straight I would have sent a message to my family and colleagues saying I was in trouble and needed to go away.



‘But I didn’t know what to do, I was scared. I turned my phone off. I didn’t log in to any of my online accounts. I was worried the mafia would find me.’



Mr Dart, pictured on holiday in Hawaii with his wife in 2010, ran a successful events management firm in Tokyo

Now: Mr Dart has been back in the UK since October, but has not yet met his younger son, born a few weeks ago

Within days Mrs Dart had reported her husband missing and his father Robert, 64, had contacted the Foreign Office.



A fortnight later police told the family he had left the country, but would not reveal where he had gone because of strict Japanese privacy laws.



After months on the run through southeast Asia, he was finally persuaded to contact his family by a stranger whom he spilled his story to in a street café.



He said: ‘My money was running out. My options were narrowing. I was feeling suicidal.



‘After a while the fear for my life had died down, but then I had the fear and guilt over what happened to my family. I thought what are they going to think of me?’



After contacting his sister Samantha, 44, through Facebook, he found the courage to speak to his father in Lincolnshire over the phone and was convinced to return to England.



‘I couldn’t speak to my wife or my mother. It was just too emotional,’ he said.





'After a while, the fear for my life had died down, but then I had the fear and guilt over what happened to my family. 'I thought: "What are they going to think of me?"' - British expat Garin Dart, 41, who fled his Tokyo home eight months ago

Mr Dart arrived in the UK in October and found a job within a month.



He has since got back in touch with his wife.



He said: ‘She was upset. She was angry that I hadn’t got in touch. That is the biggest thing I regret.



‘She is OK now but we had some pretty heavy conversations the first few times we talked. It is still difficult, she is still angry.’



Mrs Dart had the couple’s second child, a boy, a few weeks ago. Mr Dart does not know when he will meet his son as he fears he can never go back to Japan, but hopes to meet his wife soon.



Mr Dart said: ‘I don’t know about the future. In Tokyo I had a great lifestyle. I had a couple of nice cars on the drive, houses, a great business. I had my wife and child.



‘There has been speculation about why I left, but that is not something I would have run away from for £40,000.



‘I wouldn’t have wanted any other lifestyle. I worked hard to make that happen.’



In July Tokyo police said they had stopped looking for Mr Dart and that there had been no criminal complaints against him.



Mr Dart insists he was entitled to the money he took through sales of shares. His family have since paid it back.



A Foreign Office spokesman confirmed he was ‘no longer missing’.

