When Baharash Bagherian unveiled his concept for the world’s most ambitious ocean restoration project, it looked set to be the pinnacle of his career.
The award-winning British architect’s design, called Dubai Reefs, was launched in May 2023 to global acclaim. Bagherian showed how the largest man-made reef yet created could become a tourist attraction and marine biology centre.
Bagherian hoped he would be contacted by officials to turn it into a reality, but the call never came.
Instead, seven months later, the Dubai government announced its own artificial reef initiative at Cop28, the international climate conference it was hosting, using detailed designs in its press release and social media posts. The images had been flipped and cropped but they were otherwise identical to Bagherian’s own, he said. Yet there was no mention of Bagherian or his company, URB.
Baharash Bagherian
NIMA AMANAT
“For those few seconds, I just froze, because I was thinking, ‘My God, they’re finally doing this project’,” Bagherian said after seeing the announcement. “But at the same time, I knew immediately that they had stolen it. At that moment, any excitement just collapsed to shock and fear.”
He had no idea that in the coming months his attempts to tell ministers that someone had taken his idea — and to ask politely to work with them on it — would end with him being charged with fraud, threatened with prison, subjected to police interrogation and banned from leaving the country.
The Briton, who grew up in London and moved to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, in 2018, is still stuck there. “It’s been a nightmare. Not just for me but for everyone around me. It has shattered all the illusions that I had about Dubai being the safest place in the world,” he said.
Until now he has been too afraid to speak out because of the travel ban and criminal investigation, fearing he could be imprisoned at any time. But with no change in his situation, he feels going public is his last option.
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This week he plans to go ahead with a civil claim against the government after receiving no response to his formal mediation attempt. Bagherian said: “What started as the largest marine initiative ended as intellectual property theft and it happened in broad daylight on one of the biggest stages in the world.
“The fact that they did it in front of the world stage at Cop28, I knew that when the truth came out there would be a huge storm. And that’s the feeling I’ve had to live with for the past 15 months.”
Bagherian, 43, was born in Iran but moved to Britain at the age of 12 and became a British citizen. He last lived in Clapham, south London, where he worked as an architect and won a competition to develop a net-zero city in Dubai. In 2018 he relocated to the emirate and took up residency to take advantage of the opportunities for new developments in the Middle East.
He has previously had a positive reception to his work from officials in Dubai. The launch of his Dubai Reefs design was broadcast on state television and even appeared in a video from the government’s culture and arts authority in October 2023.
The government advertisement, left, appeared to be flipped version of Bagherian’s design, right
His proposal was for the biggest network of man-made reefs to be built under the sea, with a floating marine institute and eco lodges above it. The idea was visualised in detailed digital drawings and he explained in interviews his vision to regenerate sea life and boost ecotourism.
After the government launched its own near-identical project in December 2023, he hoped someone would be in touch. When no call came, he wrote to five ministers whose departments were involved in the project in April last year, explaining that it was his design and offering to collaborate.
There were emails acknowledging receipt but no meeting was set up. Days later, the government staged a press launch with Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai, scuba-diving as the first man-made reef module was lowered into the sea.
There is no suggestion that the crown prince himself was aware that the concept was Bagherian’s — or of the architect’s letters to ministers — but Bagherian believes that at some stage someone working with the government must have presented his idea as their own.
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Bagherian still hoped the situation would be sorted out. “I genuinely believed my initial letters to Dubai ministers would be received in good faith and lead to a positive resolution,” he said.
Then, on July 12 last year, he received a call and any hope of an amicable solution was extinguished. The caller ID flashed up as the Dubai police. “I had this gut-wrenching feeling of anxiety because I knew what it was going to be,” Bagherian said. A police sergeant told him he needed to come in for interrogation.
Bagherian said: “All my fears were triggered at once. I tried to ask him what this is about and he was very firm and said, ‘You will know when you get here’. Then I asked if I could bring a lawyer and he said, ‘No, you’re not allowed to bring a lawyer, just come now, immediately’. I was absolutely terrified.”
On arrival at the criminal investigation department, he said he was led through a long corridor to an interrogation room, where the sergeant “leant forward and said: ‘You’re accused of stealing a project from the government of Dubai’ ”. Bagherian said that when he tried to interject and explain, he was told: “You speak when I ask you a question.”
But later, when he was able to give his account, he said his interrogator softened. “I told him the whole thing: that I launched this project back in May, and it’s actually my project and every time I said something, his face changed. He kept on saying, ‘Do you have evidence?’ I said yes.
“The more I spoke, the more he seemed uncomfortable … and when I finished, he generally looked a bit unsure, and he told me to wait there. Then he came back and he said, ‘You have two weeks to come back with a detailed statement with all the evidence’ and he even said, ‘I advise you to get a lawyer’.”
But when the evidence was submitted, his troubles still did not end. With an active criminal investigation launched, Bagherian was barred from leaving the country.
Documents seen by The Sunday Times show that while police attempted to push ahead with a criminal prosecution, Dubai’s attorney-general repeatedly demanded more evidence. Since June last year, the attorney-general’s office has written a number of letters to police demanding more evidence to open a formal file for fraud. There is now a stalemate.
The government’s version, left, and Bagherian’s originals, right
The evidence submitted in the civil case included the identical visuals used by the government to promote “Dubai Reef” — a project in which the only difference in the title was the removal of the letter “s”.
Bagherian also commissioned a 428-page technical report by a court-approved intellectual property expert to examine the evidence. The report concludes “without any reasonable doubt” that there is “clear and blatant evidence of the deliberate theft and unlawful appropriation” of Bagherian’s concept by the Dubai government and its affiliated bodies — without his permission.
The travel ban means he has been unable to see family in the UK or elsewhere. He has not yet been able to introduce his fiancée to his family and when her father died in May he could not travel for the funeral. “That was the time she needed me most and I couldn’t be with her to share the burden,” he said.
He has repeatedly sought help from MPs and ministers in the British government for “false criminal allegations and a politically motivated travel ban”.
Writing to Sir Keir Starmer in June, Bagherian told the prime minister he had “exhausted all legal avenues within the UAE” and that “the scale of misconduct, shielded by high-level political protection, makes it clear that only diplomatic intervention can resolve my unlawful detention”.
When a reply came it was from a consular casework officer in London, who said they appreciated “this must be a difficult time” but that the government “cannot get involved in intellectual property or legal disputes over commercial matters”.
Bagherian said: “I feel a sense of betrayal from my government because it was clear from the get-go they did not want to get involved. I just want to come home.”
The Dubai police told prosecutors that the idea for an ocean restoration project was first discussed by the government in 2021. While two smaller reefs were built off Dubai in 2021, there is no evidence for the prior existence of the detail or images in the government’s proposal that matched Bagherian’s Dubai Reefs plan so closely.
The Foreign Office said: “We are supporting a British man in the United Arab Emirates.”
The government of Dubai was approached for comment.