All 3 Fayed Brothers, Ex-Owners of Harrods, Are Now Accused of Sexual Assault

 

All 3 Fayed Brothers, Ex-Owners of Harrods, Are Now Accused of Sexual Assault

 

An abuse scandal that once appeared centered on the billionaire Mohamed al-Fayed has since widened to include Salah and Ali, with whom he owned Harrods, the iconic London department store.

 

Megan Specia

By Megan Specia

Reporting from London

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/world/europe/harrods-mohamed-fayed-brothers-sexual-assault.html

Feb. 14, 2025

Updated 3:14 a.m. ET

 

Ms. McIlquham had joined Harrods, the luxury department store in London, in 1993. A Canadian on a work-abroad program, she was promoted from the shop floor to become a personal assistant to Mohamed al-Fayed, who co-owned the business with his younger brothers, Salah and Ali.

 

In early 1994, she recalled, she boarded the company’s private jet and flew to Gstaad to work as an assistant to Ali.

 

Once she got there, however, there was no work to do, she said. She was alone in the chalet with Ali and a housekeeper. Then Ali, who was in his early 50s, took her to a swimming pool. She remembers the black swimsuit and fake pearl necklace she was wearing.

 

“I just remember him pulling me in, the groping and the pulling in from the waist and my bottom, just grabbing and groping and pulling,” said Ms. McIlquham, now 52, in an interview. She believes it was the weekend of April 30, 1994, because she remembers the Eurovision Song Contest was on TV.

 

“I was molested, sexually molested, without a doubt. And he was just giggling,” she said.

 

A spokesman for Ali, who is now 81 and lives in Greenwich, Conn., denied the allegations from Ms. McIlquham and others. “The alleged incidents simply never occurred,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Mr. Fayed is not a perpetrator and will not be scapegoated. He will robustly defend himself against these unsubstantiated claims.”

 

In September, a BBC documentary revealed how Mohamed al-Fayed, the billionaire former chairman of Harrods, had abused women for decades before he died in 2023. More than 20 women shared accounts of having been raped or sexually assaulted by him, detailing how he used his companies to groom and exploit them. Harrods apologized, describing him as “an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated.”

 

But in the months since, several female former employees have come forward to allege that his brothers — Salah, who died in 2010, and Ali — also assaulted them, deepening a scandal that once appeared centered on one man.

 

As the last living brother, Ali could still face possible repercussions as the dark history of the Fayed family and the iconic department store they ran is unearthed. This month, the BBC published the accounts of three women, including Ms. McIlquham, who said that Ali sexually assaulted them while they worked for Harrods in the 1990s.

 

Ms. McIlquham said that she believes what happened to her in Switzerland took place within a broader system at Fayed-owned companies to exploit women. She said that Ali “operated this system to his advantage.”

 

In coming forward, Ms. McIlquham and others point a finger not only at Ali but also at the doctors, recruiters, human resource professionals and others who enabled the alleged abuse at the Fayeds’ businesses.

 

Accounts given to The New York Times by another three women who said that they had been targeted by Mohamed or Salah, together with court filings, signal a pattern of exploitation at Harrods and at the Ritz Paris, a hotel the brothers also owned. Documents, emails and corroborating details from other women provide additional evidence of their allegations.

 

Harrods, which is now owned by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, said it would not comment on individual cases but “supports the bravery of all survivors in coming forward.”

 

“Their claims point to the breadth of abuse by Mohamed Fayed and raise serious allegations against his brothers, Salah and Ali Fayed,” a spokesperson for Harrods said.

 

The women were recruited into positions where they would be vulnerable.

The Fayed brothers, who were born in Egypt, founded a shipping business together and then amassed oil, banking and real estate interests around the world.

 

They bought the Ritz Paris in 1979 and Harrods in 1985. When Mohamed moved to London in 1974, he added “al-” to his name, though his brothers still went by Fayed. Mohamed later became known for the romance between his son, Dodi, and Diana, Princess of Wales, who both died in a 1997 car crash. Salah and Ali remained lesser-known figures, but their business interests were intertwined.

 

All four women interviewed by The Times described being recruited into executive training programs that brought them closer to the brothers. Two women said that they had been targeted by more than one brother.

 

In October 1993, while working as Mohamed’s personal assistant, Ms. McIlquham was sent to Villa Windsor, the Paris mansion where Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson once lived, and which Mohamed had leased. After she went to sleep, she said, Mohamed entered her room with just a towel around his waist, and crawled into her bed.

 

“The groping, the panting, the touching, him just going in for you, it was awful,” she said. He eventually left when she mentioned her mother. Another Harrods employee, who asked to remain anonymous over privacy concerns, was on the trip with Ms. McIlquham and corroborated the stay at the Villa Windsor, and the date — Oct. 13, 1993 — which she had recorded in her diary.

 

Ms. McIlquham said that she hadn’t told anyone about the assault by Mohamed or Ali’s groping of her because she assumed that she would be blamed. She needed the job to pay her rent, and she continued working for Harrods until 1996, when she left Britain. “I had to distance myself from what was going on, and get as far away as I could,” she said.

 

Rachael Louw, now 53, joined Harrods in 1993 before being recruited the following year as a personal assistant to Salah. In the summer of 1994, she was told by a supervisor to accompany Salah to his yacht and was given money for new clothes. She traveled on a Harrods jet with Salah to France before a driver took them to Monaco.

 

“I thought I would be given files to file, paperwork to put away, maybe I would be making the travel arrangements,” she said. But there was nothing, she said.

 

Salah instructed her not to talk to the staff and propositioned her sexually multiple times. Each time, she rebuffed him. Then, one night, he climbed into her bed, she said. “He said, ‘I’m lonely, I just want to sleep with you,’” she recounted. “It was the longest night of my life. I just lay there and I couldn’t sleep.”

 

Afterward, Ms. Louw asked to return to her previous job on the shop floor and tried to move on with her life. But in 1996, she said that Mohamed summoned her to his Park Lane apartment for some paperwork. Once there, Mohamed put his hand up her skirt and groped her, Ms. Louw said.

 

Like Ms. McIlquham, she did not feel able to speak out at the time. “This was just a part of my life I put into a box and never opened up,” said Ms. Louw, who also spoke about her experiences with Sky News this month.

 

Other women have shared accounts in recent months of being abused by Salah, including in a November report by the BBC. In a lawsuit filed in London on Jan. 29, a woman, who was granted anonymity by the court, alleged that Salah drugged and raped her while she worked for Harrods and that he coerced her into “terminating a forced pregnancy,” according to court documents. She is suing the company.

 

The abuse extended to other businesses owned by the Fayeds.

 

“We were not hired for real jobs. We were hired to be abused sexually,” she said.

 

When she first met Mohamed, he forcibly kissed her, she said, shoving his tongue in her mouth. On another occasion when she was alone with him in an office, Ms. Svensson said he shoved open her legs with his knee and then thrust her head into his crotch.

 

“I was so, so afraid, and I couldn’t get away,” she said. 

 

She felt unable to speak out, she said, because of the threat of losing her job. But eventually, she said, she told a senior executive at the Ritz Paris about the abuse and informed them that she was planning to resign. Days later, she was fired.

 

Ms. Svensson outlined her allegations against Mohamed in a 2003 letter to a lawyer representing another hotel employee who said she had also experienced sexual assault. In the letter, seen by The Times, she noted that she had reported the sexual abuse to senior staff before leaving the Ritz Paris.

 

At least one other woman, Pelham Spong, told the Ritz that Mohamed had assaulted her, in an email exchange seen by The Times. Ms. Svensson’s account was included in the BBC documentary last year, and Ms. Spong has previously spoken publicly about her assault.

 

Ms. Spong, who is American, was 23 and living in Paris when a recruiter asked in 2008 if she would consider a job as an assistant to the Fayeds in Monaco. “I remember thinking — I’m a woman with ambition. I think I’m fairly smart, and this sounds amazing,” Ms. Spong said. In London, she was given a gynecological exam that the company doctor said would remain confidential — a process that many victims of Mohamed also recounted.

 

She was found to have an infection and prescribed an antibiotic. Afterward, she was sent to Mohamed’s office. “He sat me down, and he said, ‘You saw the doctor. Did you take care of that problem?’” she said. “I was humiliated.”

 

He offered to send her to business school, pay her rent and give her cash, she said, in exchange for sex. Then, she said, he grabbed her face and forcibly kissed her. On returning to Paris, she reported the assault to the recruiter, who shared the information with executives at the Ritz. Ms. Spong was told that she was no longer needed for the job. Emails between the recruiter and the Ritz Paris, seen by The Times, corroborate her account.

 

The Ritz Paris said it was conducting an investigation led by outside counsel. “We are alarmed by the recent testimonies and allegations of abuse,” the Ritz said in a statement. “We do not tolerate any form of violence or sexual coercion and would like to express deepest sympathy to the brave women who have come forward.”

 

The Metropolitan Police in London have received more than 100 allegations against Mohamed al-Fayed since the BBC documentary aired. In November, the police said they were investigating at least five people who may have facilitated the abuse.

 

Sigrid McCawley, managing partner of Boies Schiller Flexner who is representing Ms. Spong and has represented some of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, emphasized the importance of focusing not only on the abuse, but also on the system in which it occurred.

 

“What we’ve seen with the Fayeds’ story is just a saga that smacks of these enablers,” she said. “Because we’re seeing this systemic abuse is happening, and this well-oiled machine of all of these very sophisticated individuals that helped him commit these crimes.”

 

Sarah Hurtes contributed reporting.

 

Megan Specia reports on Britain, Ireland and the Ukraine war for The Times. She is based in London. More about Megan Specia