David Haigh, the former managing director of Leeds United and general counsel of private equity group GFH Capital, has filed a High Court claim alleging GFH and a Gibson Dunn & Crutcher partner engaged in deceit.

Haigh (pictured), who is seeking damages in excess of £100,000, says false representations were made by his former employer and Gibson Dunn to lure him to Dubai for a job interview with GFH on 18 May this year.

He was arrested on arrival, after GFH accused him of committing fraud, embezzlement and money laundering while he was employed at the bank.

Since then, he has been held in jail while Dubai authorities investigate the embezzlement claims, which GFH say amount to more than £4m in fabricated invoices.

Gibson Dunn litigation partner Peter Gray, who previously advised GFH, has been named as a defendant in the claim alongside the private equity house, its Bahraini parent company Gulf Finance House, senior executive officer Jinesh Patel, and managing director Hisham Al Rayes.

The claim was filed by Stephenson Harwood partner Rovine Chandrasekera, who is acting on behalf of Haigh alongside Dubai-based associate Shiraz Sethi, and Quadrant Chambers' Robert Lawson QC.

Haigh's spokesman said no criminal charges have been brought against the former Leeds United man, and that the total claims against GFH are expected to run into "millions of pounds".

In a statement last week, GFH alleged Haigh had "decided to mount a campaign in the press and on Twitter misrepresenting what is happening in the case".

Following Haigh's arrest, GFH successfully obtained worldwide freezing orders on Haigh's assets as it pursues a separate civil claim for the funds it says Haigh embezzled.

The accusations from GFH include the claim that Haigh misappropriated $5m (£3m) of the private equity company's funds "by creating or procuring the creation of false invoices and procuring payment of those false invoices", charges which Haigh denies.

This included allegedly falsifying fee invoices totalling £1,303,678 between 25 April and 24 December last year to a bank account purportedly owned by Fountain Court barrister David Murray.

GFH says Murray's clerk only raised two separate fee notes, for £8,350 and £3,505 respectively, during the period, and that the £1.3m of invoices were sent to an account not owned by Murray.

In June, Haigh took to Twitter to accuse GFH's lawyers Gibson Dunn of having a conflict of interest, based on the firm's "past work and professional relationships with him", a claim rejected by the firm.

Haigh took over as the managing director of Leeds in July 2013, following its acquisition by Dubai based-GFH. He resigned from his post at GFH in April after Leeds was sold to Italian businessman Massimo Cellino.

Last year, Haigh told Legal Week that prior to his time at GFH and Leeds, he worked in an in-house role at Barclays, and in private practice at Thomas Eggar, DLA Piper and Akin Gump.