A top South African diplomat who disappeared in Malaysia for a week was kidnapped and tortured while money was extorted from him, the high commission said today.

Deputy High Commissioner Nicky Scholtz, 54, had been forced into a car and "violently abducted" while walking along a street near his hotel in the centre of Kuala Lumpur on May 23, the embassy said in a statement.

The mission took the unusual step of defending Scholtz against "sensationalist" reporting of his disappearance in which some local media hinted that the police investigation had centred on his personal life, including a possible love tryst.

Scholtz, a bachelor who arrived in Malaysia last month, was the victim of "what appears to have been a random attack on the mistaken assumption that he was a solitary foreign tourist", the embassy said.

He was "subsequently confined with the purpose of brutally extorting money from him - at times threatened with a knife, bound with wire cables, repeatedly tortured and on more than one occasion his captors threatened to kill him.

"These assaults resulted in at least two fractured ribs, temporary dislocation of his jaw, severe bruising on his back and bruising to his face, arms and legs."

Robbed of RM16,000

The kidnappers "extorted" RM16,000 from him, the embassy said, without giving details of how this was done. Local media have said some of the money was withdrawn on his credit cards.

He was released last Sunday under threat of death on condition that he would leave Malaysia without reporting his experiences, the embassy said.

The fact that he had not obeyed this instruction "justifies the high regard in which Mr Scholtz is held by his employers, colleagues, family and friends".

The high commission criticised "the sensationalist, sometimes misleading and at times factually blatantly incorrect reporting that has accompanied this very serious case", and said it was working closely with the Malaysian authorities on the abduction.

At the time of Scholtz's disappearance, Malaysian police had discounted the possibility that he had been kidnapped. - AFP