In July 2003 Toby “Tig” Hague – a 31-year-old derivatives broker with a successful career, a beautiful girlfriend and an almighty hangover – arrived at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on a business trip. Groggily he made his way to customs, where an airport official informed him he had too many duty-free items in his bag.

At this point the official made a gesture that is understood in most parts of the globe: he rubbed his finger and thumb together. Hague, though, hampered by his Englishness, failed to understand that a bribe was required. A search followed – and about a minute later his rather cocky facade had collapsed.

In the pocket of Hague’s jeans was a tiny amount of hash – enough for one joint – a leftover from a recent stag weekend. If it had been discovered by the Metropolitan police they would probably have told him off and sent him on his way. Hague was very far from London, however.

Despite the best efforts of lawyers, his employers, the British embassy and his family, he was carted off by the airport authorities (who ramped up the amount of cannabis he had been carrying to “smuggling” levels) and deposited in a prison in Moscow for five months, then in a Mordovian gulag – Zone 22 (the title of his book about the experience, which is published by Michael Joseph this week) – for a further 15. By the time he emerged in March 2005, he was three stone lighter.

In his book about these experiences, Hague describes the gulag as being reminiscent of the PoW camp in The Great Escape – with guards who meted out regular beatings with their nightsticks, and violent fellow prisoners who needed no such props. In summer the heat – and the attention of the camp’s mosquitoes – was unbearable. In winter, the inmates froze in their inadequate prison clothes in temperatures as low as -35C.

During his incarceration in Zone 22 his parents – a builder and a housewife – not only shelled out more than £100,000 in bribes and lawyers’ fees to try to secure his freedom but also, with the help of the British embassy, provided him with enough chocolate, coffee and cigarettes to bribe his way out of trouble.

His girlfriend Lucy, with whom he had been planning to buy a house, was distressed to be told he was allowed visits only twice a year. So in June 2004, on the first of her three-hour prison visits, she proposed. If they were married, she reasoned, at least they would be allowed to see each other four times a year.

The wedding, five months later, was an odd occasion, says Hague. Held in a drab anteroom of the camp, the ceremony was conducted by a grim-faced female registrar, with one of the more sadistic guards acting as a witness and a junior member of the British embassy translating. Hague was not allowed even a sip of the sparkling wine that Lucy had brought to celebrate the occasion – instead the guard polished it off himself. And the 48-hour honeymoon took place in a dirty cell, with two single beds pushed together.

It was hardly a joyful occasion. Just before the ceremony began Lucy had broken the news that her mother had just died of cancer.

“That was the toughest thing for me,” says Hague, in his flat Essex accent. “I still find it upsetting to deal with now. I felt like I was being selfish. I’d sit in bed every night thinking about how terrible my life was, while back home Lucy had been dealing with her troubles on her own.”

Today he and Lucy have a 15-month-old daughter, Isabella, and he is working again – this time for Tullett Prebon, an interdealer brokerage, where he specialises in emerging markets (ironically he now has many Russian clients who think he is a real “tough guy” because of his experience).

At their terraced home in South Woodford, Essex, croissants are piled on the sideboard and Hague is enjoying an espresso. But for a touch of gauntness in his face, it would be hard to guess that he had endured so much.

“I know – it’s mad, isn’t it?” he says, looking around his comfortable home. “I still think about it every day – not prison so much as how the whole situation came about. Why didn’t I know that all that airport guy wanted was a bribe?”

For a year after he was released he suffered from nightmares – both waking and sleeping. He would see a stranger’s face that reminded him of a fellow prisoner, and immediately be cast back into his daily routine in the gulag: the dawn callisthenics on the frozen ground, the watery porridge he was given for almost every meal, the brain-deadening manual labour in the camp’s sewing factory, and his fitful nights in a bunkroom with dozens of dangerous inmates.

“I’ve never been a quick-tempered person and that helped me a lot. I’d take whatever was being doled out by the guards and the other prisoners. It was all about keeping my head down, working hard, bribing the right people with the right goods, and avoiding any kind of confrontation.

“I saw plenty of guys taking a beating, spending spells in solitary and nearly driving themselves mad by fighting back against the system. That wasn’t for me. I just wanted to get out.”

Hague says he is philosophical about what happened. “I reckon something like this was destined. When I got arrested, I was at a stage in life where I was working hard, playing hard; I was enjoying my life as if I were 21, 22 years old. Maybe I needed a wake-up call. And maybe this was it . . .

“It was a very harsh lesson to have learnt, but I’m alive. I got through it. And I have changed immensely.”

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