The 53-year-old explained how on the night of his escape last summer he stepped into a full-length diving suit, complete with breathing equipment, before adding padding to cover the shape of the kit.

Jaubert, who designs and builds leisure submarines, then disguised himself in a burka and walked down to the water’s edge.

From there, he swam underwater to the nearby coastguard station, on a remote outpost, where he cut the fuel lines on a police patrol boat. He knew it was the only one in the area, and the coast would now be clear.

He then swam back to the beach, got into a Zodiac dinghy and headed back out to sea. Six hours later he was 25 miles off-shore and outside Dubai’s territorial waters. Another former French agent met him in a yacht, he claims.

The pair then sailed to Mumbai, India, which took a week. Jaugbert told the French consul that he had lost his passport and was given a new one.

Jaubert had been working as a contractor for ship-builder Dubai World in 2007 when he was called in for questioning by police, he told The Sunday Times. An executive at the firm had reported finding bullets in Jaugbert’s office and police thought he was a mercenary or hitman. At the same time, the company accused Jaubert of billing for goods that did not arrive.

According to Jaubert, his employers had run out of money and wanted to find a way of sacking him without paying benefits that would have been due under a five-year contract.

‘The police had interrogated me for hours and threatened me with torture,’ he said from his home in Florida, where he now lives with his wife and two children. ‘I lived with a ball of fear in my stomach.’

He said that if he hadn’t left, he’d be ’stuck in the same nightmare as the others’, referring to the dozens of expatriate businessmen who are languishing in Dubai jails for alleged ‘economic crimes’.

As the economic slump deepens, foreigners are being jailed for misdeeds not generally considered as crimes, such as the bouncing of a cheque.

To the Emirati authorities, however, Jaugbert – who is writing a book about his experiences – is a liar and convicted fraudster. He was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison after his escape in the dinghy.

A spokesman for Dubai World said Jaubert had been dismissed because ‘he was found stealing from the company’, adding that his five-year sentence was ‘entirely appropriate’.