Baharash Bagherian, founder of Dubai-based studio URB, designed the floating mixed-use ecotourism scheme Dubai Reefs, which he unveiled in May 2023.
In December that year, during Cop28, Dubai officials presented what Bagherian described as a tweaked version of the scheme without his permission. When he challenged this, he found himself facing criminal allegations and police interrogations for allegedly stealing the concept idea from the UAE authorities.
The criminal case, which lasted nearly two years, meant he was unable to leave Dubai, while he faced the prospect of a trial over fraud charges.
But Bagherian, who previously lived in London and once worked for RMJM, recently announced in a LinkedIn post that the Dubai authorities had dropped their criminal case against him, while lawyers have been appointed in a civil case he is launching.
He wrote: ‘A major victory: the criminal case against me has been dismissed. This is just the beginning. My civil lawsuit is underway, and the dismissal will be used as further evidence in my case.’
Speaking to The Times last month, he said the Dubai government had copied his designs for the hub, which six months later appeared on a state TV broadcast promoting a government-backed project.
The same visuals, which Bagherian said were his but flipped and cropped, were then presented by Dubai at Cop 28. The only difference in the uncredited design was the removal of an ‘s’ from the Dubai Reefs name.
When he alerted Dubai authorities to the copying of his design, he was charged with fraud and threatened with imprisonment.
Eventually, a court-approved intellectual property expert found that the authorities had, without any reasonable doubt’, infringed his copyright.
In a 428-page report, the expert said there was ‘clear and blatant evidence of the deliberate theft and unlawful appropriation’ of Bagherian’s designs by the Dubai government and its affiliated bodies without his permission.
When approached for comment last month, Bagherain said he stood by his comments and accounts to The Times, which came two years after the dispute began.
He told the AJ: ‘The past two years have been the most challenging of my life.
‘After more than two decades of helping shape the cities of the future, I never imagined that one of my projects, created to restore nature, would become the centre of such a painful ordeal.’
The UK Foreign Office and the UAE government were contacted for comment.