Accusation of embezzlement and escape

In 2004, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem visited Jaubert's factory in Florida and invited him to move his firm to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. 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 four mini-submarines, a submersible yacht, and a larger submarine called Nautilus which could carry nine people.^[3]

Jaubert was put in charge of a newly formed subsidiary of Dubai World that Bin Sulayem chaired, which is the same company behind the development of Palm Jumeirah and World Islands. He lived with his American wife and two children in a villa with private swimming pool. According to Dubai courts, auditors investigating the company accounts found gaps and equipments that Mr Jaubert had ordered from his own company in Florida failed to arrive, or parts were faulty. He was alleged to have short-changed Dubai World by AED 14 million. According to Jaubert, the company wanted to pull the plug on the venture but wanted to blame someone first. Jaubert was questioned by auditors and the police. According to Jaubert, the police threatened Jaubert to "insert needles into your nose again and again". According to Jaubert, he promised to pay back the AED 14 million to buy time to escape. He had a travel ban and his passport was seized due to being under investigation. After his escape, the court found Jaubert guilty of embezzlement in absentia and sentenced him to five years in prison and ordered him to repay AED 14 million.^[3]

According to Jaubert's account, 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 over it as a disguise. He slipped from his hotel to the beach at night disguised under the abaya and swam to the area's only police patrol boat, which was in a coastguard station, and climbed onto the boat and clogged its fuel lines to prevent pursuit. Next morning he made his escape on a rubber dinghy with a small outboard motor, and sailed and waited in international waters for six 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.^[3]

After Jaubert escaped, Dubai World and Dubai police accused Jaubert of embezzlement, and said that at least two of his submarines he was contracted to work on did not work.^[4]

Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum

On March 4, 2018, Hervé Jaubert, his crew, and a Finnish woman, Tiina Jauhiainen, helped Dubai Princess Latifa escape from Dubai. They were intercepted by Indian and Emirati special forces and abducted from their yacht off the coast of Goa, India. They were renditioned to Dubai and imprisoned in a secret prison. ^[5][6][7][8] Two weeks later Jaubert was released, along with Jauhiainen and the three Filipino crew, no charges were ever filed against them, while India and Dubai were accused of the abduction and for violating international treaties.^[9]

In December 2018, his American ex-wife Helene Jaubert told American news website The Daily Beast that Hervé Jaubert and Radha Stirling had been in contact with princess Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum (II) for 5 years and invented the whole disappearance scheme together. According to Helene, “The whole plan was for Herve to help her escape and once he got her out the daughter was going to get to the dad and say I want $3 million or else I’ll tell all to the media”. According to Helene, "It was a con. It’s a corrupt scheme gone haywire". Herve Jaubert denied these allegations on the news website. According to Stirling, Latifa phoned her from the boat in the middle of the ambush, saying she feared for her life and “was hearing gunshots.” According to Stirling, Latifa made the call via WhatsApp and evidence of the call was provided to authorities in the US and UK and made available to reporters, although The Daily Beast pointed out that a satellite phone is normally needed to call from their alleged location in the Indian Ocean.^[10] However, it was quickly established that the yacht Nostromo was outfitted with satellite phone.^[11] In August 2019, Tiina Jauhiainen gave her version of events to on-line magazine Insider.^[12] It was later discovered that the FBI assisted the UAE to locate Nostromo.^[13]