In the Persian Gulf area

In 2004 Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem visited his factory in Florida and invited him to move his firm to the Persian Gulf. Jaubert accepted the invitation and bin Sulayem put him in charge of a new subsidiary of Dubai World. There Jaubert set up a submarine manufacturing company with a factory, which after two years started making tourist submarines and superfast boats: it made 4 mini-submarines, a submersible yacht, and a larger submarine called Nautilus which could carry 9 people. His firm ran into difficulties: accounts differ as to what happened.

In 2007 he was interrogated intensively by Amn Al Dawla (Dubai's secret police) about being a mercenary or hitman; he said that he was threatened to be tortured. The Dubai World company claimed that $4,000,000 worth of equipment was missing. The police took his passport. He sent his family home and went under cover under false names and identities.

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Jaubert's statement

Jaubert said that the Dubai system was corrupt. He denied all charges and said he was having supply problems hiring qualified employees and purchasing parts for his submarines. Dubai's financial system was said to be in difficulties.

Jaubert has filed a lawsuit on 9 September 2009 in Martin County Court in Florida against Dubai World, for defamation, fraud, abuse of process, and false imprisonment.

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Dubai authorities' statement

After Jaubert escaped, Dubai World and Dubai's police accused him of embezzlement and said that at least two of his submarines did not work.

An Arabian Business[1] article says that Jaubert embezzled 14 million dirhams ($3,000,000) (including 1,400,000 dirhams in kickbacks) from his employer Exomos Submarines; this was said to explain his lifestyle[1] when he was chief executive officer of a money-losing startup. Jaubert denied all charges in the press and declared that his promise to pay Dubai World, the parent company of Exomos, was under duress and only to buy him time preparing his escape. He went undercover and escaped the country in May 2008.

A year later, on 28 June 2009 Dubai Court sentenced him in absentia to five years’ imprisonment. Dubai World posted the following statement on their website on 9/15/09 at http://www.dubaiworld.ae/en/Media%20Center/News/news_detail_DW-Statement.html :-

"Dubai World has filed a suit against former employee Herve Jaubert in the United States federal court, Southern Florida. The company is accusing him of fraud, theft and related charges linked to his time as CEO of Dubai World subsidiary Exomos, established in 2004 to design and make submarines. The suit is in Florida because Mr. Jaubert chose to flee there from the UAE instead of signing an agreement he had made with Dubai World to repay money he stole from the company. Dubai World is fully confident that the US court will come to the same conclusion as a Dubai court did in April 2009: that Mr. Jaubert misrepresented his ability to design and build submarines to obtain his position as CEO of Exomos, and then used that position to steal millions of dollars from Dubai World."

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Escape

A year after his first police questioning he got to Fujairah, where a set of frogman's kit was smuggled to him in parts. One night in May 2008 he put this frogman's kit on, and an Arab woman's abaya cloak (like a burqa) over it as a disguise. A newspaper photograph ([2]) shows him with a bag-on-chest rebreather with cylinder below bag, absorbent canister inside bag, no hard casing, and loop of two breathing tubes with mouthpiece (it appears to be an OMG Castoro C-96 Pro Italian-made oxygen rebreather (described here)), in its protective counterlung cover, and a handheld underwater navigation device about 30 cm square, and false breasts to fill out the ledge caused by the flat top of the breathing bag and make the overlying abaya drape more realistically like on a fat woman.

He slipped from his hotel to the sea at night and swam to the area's only police patrol boat, which was in a coastguard station, cut its fuel lines to prevent pursuit, and there or later found a rubber dinghy with motor. Next morning during the Fajr Muslim prayers[3] when the local population would not be watching he left in the rubber dinghy, for 6 hours to a prearranged meeting with a former fellow spy in a sailing boat, just outside United Arab Emirates territorial waters. The sailing boat carried him in eight days to Mumbai in India, and from there in 2008 he went home to Florida.