A former French spy has told how, after being accused of a multimillion-pound fraud in Dubai, he disguised himself as an Arab woman and fled to international waters in a rubber dingy.

Herve Jaubert, who served in the French intelligence service until March 1993, said that he drew on his experience to escape after a joint business venture turned sour.

He said that he had been running a business in America building submarines when he was approached by Dubai World, a state-owned conglomerate, to form a joint venture making submarines, and he moved to Dubai in 2004.

“Like an idiot I thought Dubai would be my new home and that I would want to stay there for ever,” he said.

The dream ended in 2007 when, he said, Dubai World began to claim that expensive equipment was missing. Jaubert claims that the accusations were a pretext for the company to get rid of him and that he provided receipts proving that nothing was missing.

He claims that Dubai World then falsely accused him of smuggling weapons and called the police. He said that officers interviewed him three times, threatening to torture him.

“I knew then that I had to escape,” he said. “I sent my wife and two children back to the United States. Once I was alone in Dubai, I turned to what I used to do before as an intelligence officer.

“When I was a secret agent I was a ghost, but here it was different, I was not a ghost any more; these people had my picture. I decided to disguise myself as a woman and then I became a ghost. When you are covered from head to toe in an abaya and veil nobody talks to you, nobody looks at you. Wearing the abaya nobody bothered me, it’s like I never existed. That’s the best disguise you can find because even a police officer cannot talk to you.”

Jaubert said that he used a fake name to buy a boat to avoid suspicion that he was about to leave the country. “I escaped on the dinghy. When you leave with a boat above a certain size you have to go to the authorities and have your passport stamped and I could not do that. When I was a secret agent for my country I used to go in and out of countries on a rubber dinghy because no one pays attention to a rubber dinghy.

“I checked every 10 metres of that coastline and there are police boats pretty much everywhere. I could not find a place where there were no police boats so I chose the place where there was only one. The night before I escaped I went into the coastguard station and I sabotaged the boat to make sure that the next day if someone saw me on the water they could not chase me.

“I know it’s criminal to do that, but it was done in self-defence. I was trying to protect myself against people who threatened to torture me.”

After six hours in the dinghy, he was picked up by a friend on a sailing boat and taken to Mumbai.

In June this year, Jaubert was convicted of embezzling money from Dubai World through his company Exomos by overcharging for equipment. Prosecutors said that two submarines Jaubert had been contracted to build were faulty and lacked essential parts.

“When I saw that I was convicted in absentia I was totally outraged,” he said. “Even Bin Laden hasn’t been tried in absentia. I’m not worried about being tracked down. I am now in the US and to have me extradited they have to go to court, they have to hire lawyers, they have to show cause. They can’t do that. I am still careful though, I’m watching. It’s not behind me yet because I need to clear my name.”

He said that he has turned his story into a book, Escape from Dubai, to be published in October.

“It was so incredible I thought: ‘I’m going to write a book about that.’ If you put everything together — a real spy, making submarines, who is then betrayed by these people. What I’m telling you is a true story.

“My book is going to come out and people are going to know the true story and then I will put it behind me. So far I’m still affected by that and by what they did to me.”

Jaubert said that the Dubai authorities will ban his book, but that he has found a way for people to get it. “It will be disguised. You might receive a book on flowers or furniture, but it’s just a cover,” he said.

Dubai World could not be contacted for comment last night.

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president