2024-09-19 12:12:37
Mohamed al-Fayed, the late Egyptian billionaire and former owner of luxury department store Harrods, raped and sexually abused some of his former women employees, a new BBC documentary has claimed.
The documentary, ‘al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods’, claims that the billionaire raped five women and sexually abused at least 15 others when they worked at the luxury department store.
Mohamed al-Fayed died last year aged 94. He had sold Harrods to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in 2010.
The victims told the BBC that the alleged abuses took place in London, Paris, Saint-Tropez and Abu Dhabi.
A woman told the BBC she was raped as a teenager in al-Fayed’s apartment. “Mohamed al-Fayed was a monster, a sexual predator with no moral compass,” she told the BBC. Three other women said that they were also raped by him in the apartment.
A fifth woman told the BBC that al-Fayed raped her at his Villa Windsor apartment in Paris and then made her wash herself with disinfectant.
“Obviously he wanted me to erase any trace of him being anywhere near me,” she told the BBC.
The BBC documentary makers said that the women came forward after seeing al-Fayed’s sympathetic portrayal in the Netflix series ‘The Crown’. An episode of the Netflix series covers Princess Diana’s relationship with al-Fayed’s son Dodi after her divorce with Prince Charles. Diana and Dodi died in a car crash in 1997, following which al-Fayed unsuccessfully fought a long legal battle to prove the British Royal Family’s role in their deaths.
In a statement, Harrods said: “We are utterly appalled by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Mohamed al-Fayed. These were the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated and we condemn them in the strongest terms. We also acknowledge that during this time as a business we failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologise.”
“The Harrods of today is a very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by al-Fayed between 1985 and 2010; it is one that seeks to put the welfare of our employees at the heart of everything we do,” it added.
The Harrods said ever since the new information came to light in 2023, they have prioritised to settle claims in the quickest way possible.
“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,” the company said.
