Towards the end of October 2008, Mohamed Al Fayed found himself in trouble. Deep trouble.
A 15-year-old employee at his famous London department store, Harrods, had gone to the police, claiming that he’d subjected her to a sexual assault.
The girl alleged that a few months earlier, Al Fayed had instructed her to visit the boardroom. Once the door was closed, he’d started ‘hugging me, getting touchy and feely, and rubbing himself against me’ before forcibly inserting his tongue in her mouth.
The teenager told detectives that she’d wriggled free from his clutches, only for Al Fayed, who was then aged 79, to grab her breasts.
Officers from Operation Sapphire, Scotland Yard’s sexual crimes unit, had duly interviewed both the girl and her appalled mother.
Mohamed Al-Fayed found himself in deep trouble in October 2008, when he was accused of sexual assault by one of his Harrod’s employees
It turned out the leathery billionaire first recruited his alleged victim, aged 14, to work in Harrods when he’d spotted her on CCTV shopping there
It turned out the leathery billionaire first recruited his alleged victim to work in Harrods when he’d spotted her on CCTV shopping there. At the time, she was just 14. He’d then groomed her via endless calls and messages, evidence of which remained on the girl’s telephone.
On October 22, Al Fayed voluntarily attended Twickenham police station to be questioned under caution.
The following day, the retail mogul’s very worst fears were realised: the Daily Mail revealed he was under investigation for sex crimes. We reported that inquiries were ‘continuing’.
But dodgy tycoons of Al Fayed’s standing don’t take these sorts of things lying down. Instead, they fight back, usually by instructing blue chip lawyers to threaten news outlets.
His chosen attack dogs, in this endeavour, were Schillings – a highly combative law firm who these days are best-known for representing the noted feminists Prince Harry and his wife Meghan.
They fired off a furious letter to the Mail, alleging that our coverage of the girl’s claims was ‘defamatory’, a breach of Al Fayed’s human rights, and demanded ‘as a matter of urgency you provide to us the identity of the article’s ‘source’.’
Simultaneously, Al Fayed got his media spokesman at the time, Katharine Witty, to stand in front of Harrods and read out a statement claiming he ‘vehemently denies’ wrongdoing ‘and is confident his name will be cleared’.
The Mail, of course, refused to reveal its sources. But other outlets were more or less silenced. Virtually nothing was heard about the affair until five months later, when the CPS – which was being run by one Keir Starmer – decided the Harrods owner would not be prosecuted, arguing there was ‘no realistic chance of conviction’.
Case closed, as they say. Until this week. For on Thursday, that girl, going by the name ‘Ellie’, appeared on a BBC documentary that showed Al Fayed to be a prolific sexual predator who for more than three decades used wealth and status to abuse girls and women on his payroll.
More than 20 told the Corporation how he’d assaulted them, with four saying they’d been raped. Some 13 were attacked at 60 Park Lane – a block of flats adjacent to the Dorchester Hotel.
Nine were attacked by Al Fayed in Paris, either at the Ritz Hotel, which he owned, or his private home, Villa Windsor. Others were targeted on business trips to the Middle East, or at his villa near St Tropez, where Princess Diana stayed during her ill-fated romance with his son, Dodi.
Their shocking claims shed new light on a man who was hagiographically portrayed by Netflix in a recent series of The Crown. It painted Al Fayed much like high-profile former BBC journalist and royal correspondent Michael Cole sought to portray him: a sort of lovable rogue cruelly victimised by snobs and racists in the British establishment.
More than 20 victims told the Corporation how he’d assaulted them, with four saying they’d been raped. Some 13 were attacked at 60 Park Lane next to the Dorchester hotel
One former staffer, Cheska Hill-Wood, says she went to Al Fayed’s flat, where he asked her to slip into her swimsuit and then kissed her, refusing to help her if she didn’t oblige
Al Fayed attending an after party for the film Spectre at the British Museum, London
Yet Al Fayed’s revolting peccadillos were, in certain circles, an open secret, kept hushed by a motley array of security guards, lawyers, publicists and even doctors.
One guilty party was Al Fayed’s head of security John Mcnamara, a gun-toting former Metropolitan Police officer who led a team of around 40 bodyguards. One of them described him to the BBC as ‘a nasty piece of work’ skilled in the dark arts.
One victim, who went to the press with her allegations in 1995, told the BBC she was threatened by Macnamara, who died five years ago. ‘He said I wasn’t to be involved in the article, and if I went against his advice, he knew where my parents lived,’ she said.
Another recalled being placed under surveillance by Mcnamara’s team after Al Fayed attempted to rape her. ‘I believed that because I had said no to Mohamed, they were keeping tabs on me to make sure I wasn’t telling anybody.’
Then there was Max Clifford, the disgraced late publicist who was jailed in 2014 for a string of historic sex assaults. In the mid-2000s, he was recorded boasting to undercover journalist Chris Atkins how Al Fayed had for years employed him to keep sex crimes hushed up.
‘It’s like Mohamed, you know, Harrods, who’s 76 going on 18 when it comes to young ladies. He’s a randy old sod. Fine. So I’ve stopped this, stopped that [from becoming public] whatever, whatever, whatever.’
Although the undercover film was eventually broadcast in 2009, fears of litigation meant Al Fayed’s name was taken out.
Elsewhere on the shady businessman’s payroll was a medic, Dr Wendy Snell.
She worked for Harrods as the company doctor. According to interviewees, her duties included highly intrusive checks on female staff members who Al Fayed was targeting to ensure they didn’t have sexually-transmitted diseases. In a staggering breach of medical ethics, she reported the results directly back to him – without the consent of patients.
The checks were part of a sinister modus operandi, outlined in the BBC documentary, in which Al Fayed would roam around his store searching for attractive young women.
‘From time to time I would get a call from one of Mr Al Fayed’s secretaries asking me about a specific sales assistant that Mr Mohamed had seen while he was walking the store and could I please interview them for a job in his office,’ said a former HR manager, Sarah. ‘In the early days, I think I was naive enough to think he was giving them a career opportunity, but quite quickly I knew differently.’
The girls would be repeatedly propositioned, often forcibly.
‘He would put his hand up my skirt,’ recalled an employee named Kristina. ‘He would take my head and push it into his genitals. I realised I should never sit, because then I was trapped. He was like an apex predator… he enjoyed the fear in my eyes.’
Perhaps understandably, given the scale of the abuse, there were several occasions when Al Fayed’s crimes came close to being uncovered. But each time, senior lieutenants executed a cover-up.
Perhaps the most notorious example occurred in the mid-1990s, when Vanity Fair published a lengthy article about his life.
Journalist Maureen Orth told how Al Fayed ‘walked the store on the lookout for young, attractive women to work in his office. Some were asked to go to Paris with him. Good-looking women were given gifts and cash bonuses almost before they understood they were being compromised.
‘Come to Papa,’ he would say. ‘Give Papa a hug.’ Those who rebuffed him would often be subjected to crude, humiliating comments about their appearance.’
She added: ‘A dozen ex-employees I spoke with said that Fayed would chase secretaries and sometimes try to stuff money down women’s blouses.’
The article quoted one senior employee saying: ‘He likes a pretty face. He wouldn’t hire someone who was ugly. He liked them light-skinned, well-educated, English and young.’
Al Fayed responded by launching a libel claim, seeking £100million in compensation, and instructed members of staff to sign statements that ‘bore witness to his good character’.
Al Fayed pictured during the Dodi Al Fayed and Diana Memorial unveiling at Harrods
Max Clifford, a disgraced late publicist who was jailed in 2014 for a string of historic sex assaults. In the mid-2000s, he was recorded boasting to undercover journalist Chris Atkins how Al Fayed had for years employed him to keep sex crimes hushed up
To ensure complete confidentiality, Michael Cole (pictured) insisted the discussion take place in a Turkish bath in London’s Mayfair. He stipulated that both men should attend stark naked, seemingly to ensure no secret recording devices were being used
One of those employees told the BBC that she declined, only for a courier to deliver a package to her home a couple of days later which ‘included a statement I had supposedly given witnessing Mohamed’s good character, signed by me’.
She recalled: ‘I had not given that statement and I had not signed a statement. At which point I was absolutely terrified.’
Despite such legal dark arts, Vanity Fair vigorously defended the libel claim.
Over a period of months, it assembled compelling evidence that Al Fayed was indeed a prolific sexual predator, including testimony from staff offered money in exchange for sexual favours. ‘I really think we had a very strong case,’ recalled its UK editor Henry Porter.
When Vanity Fair filed that defence, the tycoon panicked – it was clear, from their submissions, that any trial would see his abusive behaviour raked over in court.
Al Fayed therefore decided to withdraw the claim against publisher Conde Nast.
But he needed to simultaneously ensure its damning evidence was never made public. PR man Michael Cole was put in charge of negotiating a settlement, and arranged to meet with Conde Nast executive Nicholas Coleridge.
To ensure complete confidentiality, Cole insisted the discussion take place in a Turkish bath in London’s Mayfair. He stipulated that both men should attend stark naked, seemingly to ensure no secret recording devices were being used.
Coleridge still recalls what he dubs the ‘naked rendezvous’, telling me: ‘Conde Nast’s insurers said they would pay all our costs if Fayed dropped the case – which they did.’
There is no evidence that Cole was aware of his boss’s crimes at the time, but it ensured Al Fayed’s abuse was covered up.
Similar tactics were used by Al Fayed to hush up claims by a former employee named Gemma, who he’d assaulted while wearing a silk dressing gown at Villa Windsor in the late-2000s. Gemma subsequently purchased a dictaphone and recorded a number of their unedifying conversations before suing for harassment.
She was swiftly offered a substantial financial settlement in return for agreeing to shred all transcripts and destroy the tapes. ‘Someone from the Harrods HR department was there to witness it,’ she recalled.
The second time Al Fayed’s abuse came close to being exposed was in the late-1990s. An ITV series called The Big Story broadcast a documentary called ‘Sex, Lies and Audiotape’ in which four employees alleged that they were groped and promised lavish rewards in return for sex.
It also told how female staff were being sent to a private clinic for STI tests. A former Harrod’s lawyer, Francesca Bettermann, said: ‘I think he organises medicals for any girl that he takes a fancy to, just on the off-chance that he might succeed.’
One victim told ITV: ‘He used to touch me, touch my bum or touch the back of my legs, anything. And he made me feel really upset and angry. He made me come into his office and he started abusing me and holding me and saying if I had sex with him he would give me anything I wanted.’
Employee Gemma (pictured), who was assaulted by Al Fayed while wearing a silk dressing gown at Villa Windsor in the late-2000s
Reports of the Egyptian businessman’s sexual indiscretions then remained under wraps until 2017, when, at the height of the MeToo scandal, Channel 4’s Dispatches finally went for the jugular
Another woman, identified as Miss X, claimed: ‘He would come and grope me and make obscene remarks about my sexual life, my private parts.’ She added that Al Fayed once tried to pay her bonus by stuffing cash down her bra.
At the time, a Harrods spokesman dismissed the allegations. And while that didn’t stop the show being broadcast, it was overshadowed by Dodi Al Fayed’s 1997 death in the Paris car accident in which Princess Diana also died.
A decade later, Al Fayed’s abuse made headlines for a third time, via the aforementioned 2008 police investigation. When the CPS decided not to prosecute, Al Fayed issued an typically shameless statement via PR chief Witty.
‘The investigation has reached an obvious and proper conclusion,’ it read. ‘But I have to ask why it took so long and why it was handled in such a way as to cause me and my businesses the maximum degree of damage. This should never be permitted in a democratic society.’
Witty – who is nowadays Katharine Spence, a senior staffer at lobbying giant Maitland – doubtless shared the remarks in good faith. But it wasn’t the last time she would be conned by Al Fayed into issuing false PR statements.
In March 2010, for example, she told journalists: ‘We are happy to confirm that Harrods is not for sale and is not being sold.’ Two months later, the store was flogged to Qatari royals.
(To her credit, Spence apologised this week, saying she was ‘absolutely appalled and horrified’ to learn full details of the 2008 case, saying ‘my heart goes out’ to Al Fayed’s victims).
But we digress. Reports of Al Fayed’s sexual indiscretions then remained under wraps until 2017, when, at the height of the MeToo scandal, Channel 4’s Dispatches finally went for the jugular.
One former staffer, Cheska Hill-Wood, told the programme she was a 17-year-old debutante and aspiring actress when she was approached ‘out of the blue’ to become a junior personal assistant in 1993. Al Fayed promptly told her that Dodi, a film producer, might be able to help her acting career.
Hill-Wood went to Al Fayed’s flat where he asked her to change into a swimming costume before he filmed her, allegedly so that his son could see her ‘shape’. He then kissed her and, after she pushed him off, barked: ‘If you don’t sleep with me, I can’t help you.’
Two other women, both anonymous, told Channel 4 that Al Fayed assaulted them.
This time, Al Fayed, who was by now in his late 80s, did not issue a denial of the claims. In fact, he didn’t comment at all. And police declined to investigate, on the grounds that he’d begun to suffer from dementia.
Amazingly, Dispatches did little to dent his popularity among celebrity friends or some of the senior staff who’d been on his payroll. So when Al Fayed died last August, they paid fulsome tribute. Uri Geller, for example, mentioned that he ‘helped a lot of sick people and children’.
As for Michael Cole, the former PR man who helped negotiate the naked meeting in a Turkish bath, he declared: ‘I never saw or heard anything to his discredit or I would not have worked for him.’ He described Al Fayed as ‘a man who did more good in the world than all his critics combined’.
Cole this week chose not to respond to messages asking whether he’d revised his opinions in light of the BBC’s latest revelations. But like many of Al Fayed’s senior associates, he should have known better.
For, as we now know, the billionaire owner of Britain’s most famous department store was a monster who hid in plain sight.
