Submariner Quote of the Year [2009]: "With my background, I don't need a passport to travel."

FINAL UPDATE (2 March 2011): Submarine case sinks - The jury had been asked to award more than $539,000 in compensatory damages to Dubai World Corp. However, jurors awarded both sides nothing. Neither side left the court room better off, according to reports.
Jaubert's version of using scuba gear to disable a patrol boat by cutting fuel lines, then motored into the ocean in a rubber dinghy to meet a waiting sailboat before sailing to India, and later to the United States was discredited in court.

"I'm happy it's over and I'm going to leave that behind and move on and go back into the submarine business," Jaubert said. "I will be building submarines again."

UPDATE (17 February 2011): Dubai World audits show ‘a lot of money' unaccounted for at subsidiary run by sub builder. Forensic accountant Maria Yip of Coral Gables testified that records showed Jaubert in 2005 charged Exomos $186,600 for two "hydrojets" that a supplier actually sold him for $162,772. Jaubert, she said, also billed Exomos for a $18,600 service charge paid to his Seahorse Submarine firm.
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UPDATE (16 February 2011): Submarine fraudster stole millions, Dubai World lawyers tell US court. According to Jaubert's lawyer, however, the submarines Jaubert had built in Dubai were successfully tested and worked as designed, with several models displayed at international boat shows in the emirate. Future UPDATES will be promptly posted.



"They picked the wrong guy. With my background, I don't need a passport to travel." - Hervé Jaubert, former French Navy officer and an ex-French spy for Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE). Skilled in covert operations and surveillance, Jaubert was also a combat diver, submariner, and marine engineer.
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In 1996, Jaubert had started a submarine charter business in Puerto Rico. He subsequently moved to Stuart, Fla., and founded Seahorse Submarines. In 2003, Dubai World, a government-owned conglomerate, asked him to move to Dubai (UAE) and bankrolled him to build submarines for the super-wealthy and charter tour industry.
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Jaubert built a submarine shop on the Persia Gulf, lived in a rent-free luxury villa and drove a red Lamborghini or one of two Hummers. He spent vacations with wealthy locals.
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Jaubert relates how the Dubai secret police confiscated his passport and had threatened to insert needles up his nose and throw him in jail for embezzlement, a crime he did not commit. To avoid torture and imprisonment in a penal twilight zone as had befallen other foreign bussinessmen in Dubai, including American bussinessman Zack Shahin, Jaubert escaped the country in May 2008, like a real James Bond.
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During Muslim prayers, when the locals were not watching, he left in a rubber dinghy and motored for 6 hours to a prearranged meeting with a former fellow spy in a sailboat outside territorial waters. They sailed to Mumbai, India in eight days, and from there eventually back to Florida.
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Jaubert has written a book Escape from Dubai and is currently in a countersuit battle with the Dubai government in a Florida court.
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Submarines are always silent and strange.