With his ruthless ambition, it was perhaps no surprise that Mohamed Al Fayed went from the streets of Egypt to rubbing shoulders with British royalty.
Having launched his career by hawking fizzy drinks on the streets of Alexandria before moving on to sewing machines, the controversial businessman spent a large part of his adult life making it his personal goal to prove his doubters wrong.
Despite building a large business empire for his family that encompassed real estate, shipping and construction, and perhaps most famously, retail, he never lost the chip on his shoulder.
It was his purchase of Harrods and his charitable foundations in Britain, followed later by his acquisition of Fulham Football Club, which saw him become a household name in the UK.
However, even as he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Princess Diana and the late Queen Elizabeth, the entrepreneur hid a dark side which is set to ruin his legacy.
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Mohamed Al Fayed with the Queen in 1997. His business connections and charity work saw him mixing with high society despite his complaints about what he saw as establishment bias
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Mr Al Fayed (right) with Prince Charles (with his back to camera) and Diana during a Harrods-sponsored polo match in 1987
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Mohamed Al Fayed pictured alongside Diana, Princess of Wales at a charity event held at Harrods in London in 1996
Following his death at the age of 94 in August 2023, the self-made Harrods billionaire has today been accused of rape by five women who allege they were attacked by him at the luxury London department store.
The women, all of whom worked for Al Fayed, say the Egyptian forced himself onto them between 1984 and 2010, with the allegations made in a new BBC programme called Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods.
Dozens others have also accused the late billionaire of sexual abuse, and claim he used his wealth, power and connections to cover up his crimes – and he had these in abundance.
At one time Al Fayed was one of the richest people in the world, with a wealth of businesses and property to his name.
After his humble beginnings in Egypt, he found his fortune in the Middle East before expanding into Europe where he made his ambitions to join the elite abundantly clear.
On his way to the upper echelons of society Al Fayed thrust his hospitality on sheikhs, tycoons, politicians and royalty, seducing many powerbrokers into believing his masquerade while they enjoyed his helicopters, jets, three yachts and nine homes.
Habitually cursing his ‘fuggin’ enemies, he would turn against anyone he suspected of disloyalty, even when this harmed his own interests.
The son of an Egyptian schools inspector, Al Fayed was born in 1929 when Egypt was still under British rule.
As a child he tramped through the streets of Alexandria, selling Coca Cola and Singer sewing machines.
He then had a stroke of luck when at the age of 23 he met Adnan Khashoggi, the eldest son of Saudi Arabia’s minister of health and future arms dealer.
Khashoggi, three years younger than Al Fayed, established his first business venture and asked the Egyptian to become his representative in Saudi Arabia importing furniture.
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Mohamed Al Fayed, former owner of Harrods and Fulham FC, is pictured here in 2018
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Mohamed Al Fayed pictured with in Harrods in 2000. The pair were friends – and Jackson accepted an invite to watch a game at Fulham FC, which Al Fayed owned at the time
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Mr Al Fayed at the opening of the Egyptian Room in Harrods – which featured busts of himself and, later, a statue commemorating Diana and his son Dodi
Two years later, after marrying Samira, Khashoggi’s younger sister, he was adopted by the wealthy family and began blurring his own past.
The birth of his first son, Dodi, in 1955 should have enhanced his ambitions. Instead, it hastened the collapse of his marriage. Rightly suspecting his infidelity, Samira demanded a divorce and instantly married a secret suitor. Mr Al Fayed was devastated.
He was cast out by the Khashoggi family, but worked his way back into the world of business when he bought a shipping firm from a persecuted Egyptian Jew in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis.
His gift for winning over people with little knowledge of him continued in Haiti, when he won over ruthless dictator Papa Doc Duvalier and convinced him to let him manage the nation’s port authority and search for oil while posing as a member of the Kuwaiti royal family.
He would flee to London in 1964 as that relationship soured, where he posed as a middleman who could fix deals in the newly oil-rich Middle East.
His stock rose when he met Mahdi al Tajir, adviser to the ruler of Dubai, then a forlorn desert outpost on the brink of discovering oil. Promoting himself as a pasha’s son expelled from Egypt with an extraordinary network of City contacts, he offered to negotiate the bank loans to finance the construction of Dubai’s first harbour.
After Al Fayed bought the Ritz in Paris in 1979, he started posing as Mohamed Al Fayed (the ‘Al’ implied high birth), and he set about financing films.
On his second attempt, he struck lucky with the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire.
In 1985 he would marry Finnish socialite and former model Heini Wathén, with whom he had another four children: Jasmine, Karim, Camilla, and Omar.
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Mohamed Al Fayed (right) with son Dodi at a party for the film Hook in 1992
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Some of Fayed’s assaults are said to have been carried out at his Park Lane property in London
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A new BBC documentary says the Egyptian-born businessman – who died in London aged 94 last August – carried out the attacks while Harrods boss between 1984 and its sale in 2010
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Mohamed Al Fayed dons a Victoria emerald and diamond tiara as he launches Harrods’ New Year sale in 2001
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He was immortalised in The Crown where he was played by Israeli actor Salim Daw, with his alleged victims complaining about the ‘funny and gregarious’ portrayal of the tycoon on the show
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Al Fayed was born in the city of Alexandria on Egypt’s north coast (pictured) where he started his business career before moving to Europe
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The billionaire owned a mansion in Oxted, Surrey, which is seen here from the air in 2009
Al Fayed had always pined for British citizenship, but had his applications turned down twice, with the continued refusal to grant it to him despite his vast business interests in the UK becoming a bitter pill to swallow.
He even acrimoniously threatened to move permanently to France, where he owned multiple properties including the Ritz hotel, and which had given him the Legion of Honour, it’s highest civilian award.
He established a charitable foundation which saw him mixing with the UK’s most illustrious figures, from stars to royalty.
It is believe he first met Diana, Princess of Wales and her then-husband Prince Charles at a polo match in the 1980s.
This meeting would be immortalised in a later season of Netflix’s hit drama, The Crown, much to anger of his victims who claimed he ‘doesn’t deserve’ the sympathetic portrayal he received on the show.
It was this connection that brought Dodi into contact with Diana, with the pair striking up a romance that became a mainstay of the tabloids after they were pictured together in St Tropez in 1997.
But months later the Diana and Dodi were infamously killed in a car crash in Paris as they sought slip away from the press when leaving the Ritz hotel in Paris, which Al Fayed owned.
He would dedicate a large portion of his later life to investigating the crash, insisting that his son and Diana were murdered at the behest of the Royal Family and peddling conspiracy theories about the Firm’s involvement.
He claimed at the inquest into Diana’s death that Charles would be ‘happy’ now that the Royal Family had ‘cleared the decks, they finished her, they murdered her’.
Such was his obsession over the deaths and his insistence on making the outlandish claims, Harrods was stripped of its four royal warrants – the right to declare that a company supplies goods by appointment to the Royal Family.
Even before his death in 2023, which happened almost 26 years to day that his son and Diana were killed, Al Fayed had faced sexual assault allegations.
In 2015 he was the centre of a police investigation into a rape allegation against him, but this did not lead to any charges.
And three years later Channel 4 reported that multiple women had accused him of sexual abuse, including one who alleged she was just 15 when he targeted her.
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One of his alleged victims, Gemma, who worked for Al Fayed as a personal assistant between 2007 and 2009, says his behaviour would turn more frightening during work trips abroad
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She says he raped her at Villa Windsor in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, a former home of post-abdication King Edward VIII and his wife Wallis Simpson
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Gemma described her former boss Fayed to the new BBC investigation as ‘a serial rapist’
The woman claimed she was just a schoolgirl when Al Fayed spotted her and offered her a job, before showering her with gifts such as perfume, designer handbags and wads of cash.
She alleged he then tried to kiss her, with no charges being brought after the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was conflicting evidence and no realistic prospect of conviction.
Two other women also described how Al Fayed would shower them with gifts, before becoming overtly sexual in his behaviour and sacking one after she refused to sleep with him.
While alive Al Fayed consistently denied the claims against him, but since his passing more women have come forward to detail their sickening interactions with him.
Alongside his brothers, Al Fayed had bought House of Fraser in the 1980s, which included London department store Harrods in Knightsbridge.
The purchase sparked a bitter feud with businessman Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland, who took the Al Fayeds to a Department for Trade inquiry claiming their wealth had been exaggerated.
Like many billionaires, Al Fayed spurned convention. He once said he wanted to be mummified in a golden sarcophagus in a glass pyramid on the roof of Harrods.
Scandal was never far away for the businessman – in the early 90s he became one of the public faces of the ‘cash-for-questions’ scandal.
It saw Conservative MPs resign in disgrace after failing to declare that they had been paid by the Egyptian to ask questions in parliament.
He approached the Guardian newspaper with the allegations in 1994, which led to the resignation of MP Tim Smith.
Another MP, Neil Hamilton, was found to have accepted bribes, including a holiday at the Ritz and a free shopping spree at Harrods.
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Mohamed Al Fayed pictured with his wife Heini Wathen in 2016. The couple had four children
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After marrying Finnish socialite Heini Wathén, Al Fayed had another four children, including Camilla (above)
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Al Fayed also had two sons – Karim (left) and Omar (right) – with Ms Wathén
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His eldest daughter Jasmine Al Fayed, pictured here at the Victoria & Albert Museum in September 2007, has kept out of the public eye
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Al Fayed married his first wife Samira Khashoggi in 1954, but divorced just a couple of years later. Pictured: Samira Khashoggi with the couple’s only son, Dodi
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The current owners of luxury department store Harrods in London (pictured) have issued a statement saying: ‘While we cannot undo the past, we have been determined to do the right thing as an organisation, driven by the values we hold today, while ensuring that such behaviour can never be repeated in the future’
Mohamed Al Fayed passed away on Wednesday at the age of 94
He did not stand down, but the scandal led to him being inextricably associated with sleaze and he lost his seat at the 1997 general election.
The questions related to controversy over Mr Al-Fayed’s ownership of Harrods, and the businessman says he was approached by lobbyist Ian Greer to grease the palms of willing MPs.
He retained ownership of the store after the Frasers group entered public trading until 2010, when he sold it to Qatar Holding for $2.4billion.
Shortly after the scandal and the same year as Dodi’s death, Al Fayed bought another British institution, this time in the shape of Fulham FC.
He spent £6million to take ownership of the ailing West London team, before injecting cash that saw them punch their way into the Premier League and European competition within a few years.
It made him a hero to many of the club’s fans, but even they were left unhappy by his decision to install a statue of Michael Jackson outside the ground in 2011 after the singer attended a match.
He would later sell the side to billionaire businessman Shahid Khan in 2013 for $300million and retreat from public life in the years up to his death.
He had homes in Surrey and his native Egypt, but became a total recluse with his final years blighted by dementia.
