Obituary
Mohamed Al Fayed obituary
Former owner of Harrods and Fulham FC whose stormy
relationship with British institutions denied him citizenship
Michael
Gillard
Sat 2 Sep
2023 11.31 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/02/mohamed-al-fayed-obituary
For Mohamed
Al Fayed, who has died aged 94, the truth was always a relative commodity –
bent and shaped to fit his need of the moment. The little-known Egyptian who
emerged as the new owner of Harrods in 1985 had to explain the source of the
£573m used to purchase control of its parent company, House of Fraser, valuing
it at £615m. So, decades before Donald Trump’s “fake news”, Fayed created what
the government inspectors who investigated the Harrods takeover later termed
“new fact: that lies were the truth and that the truth was a lie”.
Mohamed
Fayed, the son of a school inspector, who had hustled for Haiti’s feared
dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier then made a living as a facilitator for British
companies in the Gulf and Gulf rulers in London, became the fabulous pharoah
Mohamed Al Fayed, the public-school scion of an old-established Egyptian
dynasty, whose wealth from oil, property and shipping was beyond measure.
The “hero
from zero” – as his rival for Harrods, the Lonrho chief executive Roland “Tiny”
Rowland, dubbed him – used his considerable energy, cunning, determination and
persuasive skills to convince in the phoney pharaoh role he created for
himself. Fayed lied about his family, his business background, even his date of
birth, to hide a truth that was anything but pharaonic.
Fayed had
to prove he was buying Harrods with his own money, or the prize could be denied
him by the City regulators. Exactly whose money he used to buy Harrods was
never proved. As one of his investment advisers, Fayed held power of attorney
over some of the Sultan of Brunei’s Swiss bank accounts. This fed suspicions
about the possible source of the funds.
Rowland,
like the Tory MPs Fayed later paid and generously indulged, misjudged the man
he dismissed as “Tootsie”. He believed Fayed would help sidestep a Monopolies
Commission ban on Lonrho buying House of Fraser. Lonrho would “park” its near
30% stake with Fayed, who would sell it back later at a profit. Rowland did not
believe Fayed, his former Lonrho co-director, could afford a full takeover. But
Fayed saw the chance to obtain the social status he craved by owning the
world-famous store with its royal warrants.
Within 24
hours of selling in 1984, Rowland realised Fayed had no intention of being his
stooge. “Tiny” never forgave “Tootsie” for robbing him of the Harrods prize he
had coveted for years. The two men fought the most bitter, expensive and
personal feud ever seen between business rivals. It continued in the courts
even after Rowland’s death in 1998.
Pressure
from Rowland resulted in the official investigation. The damning report,
published in 1990, exposed the myths about Fayed’s family and fortune. It
accused Fayed of “an act of deception on the British government”. In response,
even though no action was taken on the report’s findings, Fayed wreaked a
savage revenge on his former friends in the Conservative government, who had
welcomed his political donations.
Fayed put
sleaze on the political agenda by exposing the “cash for questions” network
created for him with the help of the Westminster lobbyist Ian Greer. In 1994,
the Tory ministers Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith were forced to resign after
their work for Fayed was disclosed by the Guardian. Fayed also helped bring
down the defence minister Jonathan Aitken in 1995, over Saudi payment of his
£1,000 bill at Fayed’s Ritz hotel in Paris.
But these
were pyrrhic victories. The sleaze revelations helped sink John Major’s
government, which had denied Fayed the British citizenship he desired. But
Fayed was again refused a British passport by the Labour home secretary Jack
Straw in 1999 because of his self-confessed role as a corrupter.
Desperate
for social standing, Fayed donated generously to the annual Windsor horse show
and was pictured with its patron, Queen Elizabeth. He befriended the Spencer
family. Raine Spencer, stepmother of Diana, Princess of Wales, became a
director of a Harrods subsidiary.
Like some
grand vizier in an Arabian Nights tale, Fayed encouraged and manipulated an
affair between Princess Diana and his eldest son, Dodi. Fayed basked in the
international headlines. He talked seriously about becoming part of the British
royal family.
After the
tragedy of their deaths in the car crash in a Paris underpass in August 1997,
Fayed embarked on a new campaign – to prove that the royal family were
responsible for the fatal crash, rather than an over-the-limit Ritz employee
driving too fast to escape the pursuing paparazzi.
There was
much initial public sympathy. But Fayed’s ever more bizarre rantings about MI6
and CIA plots were received sympathetically only by conspiracy theorists and
admirers of Diana who refused to accept their loss could be in part due to
something as mundane as drink-driving. The claims were less warmly received at
Buckingham Palace, which withdrew the Harrods royal warrants.
Fayed
himself travelled the short distance from his Park Lane penthouse to Fulham
football club – bought earlier in 1997 – with two cars packed with bodyguards
and a medical team. An inquest jury in 2008 found that Princess Diana and Dodi
Fayed had been unlawfully killed by the gross negligence of their driver, Henri
Paul, and the paparazzi.
Fayed was
born in the poor El-Gomrok district of Alexandria in 1929, four years earlier
than he later maintained, and was the eldest of five children. He sold Singer
sewing machines until, in 1952, he joined up with Adnan Khashoggi, son of an
influential doctor in Saudi Arabia, who had attended Victoria college, a
British-style public school in Alexandria. Fayed later falsely claimed to have
also attended the school. Khashoggi later became the archetypal “fixer” for US
companies in Saudi Arabia during the 1970s petro-dollar boom – and a bitter
Fayed enemy.
Fayed the
salesman flourished at Khashoggi’s import company in Jeddah. In 1954, he
married Khashoggi’s sister Samira, the mother of Dodi. But within two years the
marriage failed, as did the business relationship. Fayed returned to Egypt and
with his brothers Ali and Salah became a shipping agent. President Gamal Abdel
Nasser’s nationalisation policy encouraged a move to Italy.
In 1964
Fayed arrived in Haiti, one of the world’s poorest nations, hailed as a rich
sheikh from Kuwait. He romanced one of Papa Doc’s daughters and persuaded
Duvalier to give him an oil concession and a contract to manage the
Port-au-Prince harbour. The Duvaliers’ love affair with Fayed was short-lived.
Early in 1965 the fake sheikh left Haiti, never to return. More than $100,000
(almost $1m today) was reportedly found to be missing from the port authority’s
bank account.
Fayed moved
to London. The construction group Costain made him its agent in the oil-rich
Gulf emirate of Dubai, where he befriended Mahdi al-Tajir, an influential
adviser to the ruling Maktoum family. The Dubai building boom was good to
Fayed. He was paid tens of millions in “commissions” by Costain and another
British contractor, Bernard Sunley, for their contracts. Most of these payments
were kicked back to those who gave the contracts – the ruling family and their
advisers. Fayed later lost his Dubai passport after a business dispute during
the 1990s with the Maktoums.
Fayed made
enough to buy Balnagown Castle in the Scottish Highlands, a Surrey mansion, a
Park Lane apartment block, part of the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, a St
Tropez estate and the Paris Ritz. Fayed made himself welcome in Paris with
political donations while leasing and restoring the former home of the Duke and
Duchess of Windsor.
Fayed would
entertain with disparaging tales about the Gulf rulers and how he arranged an
endless supply of women and gifts for their visits. Doors in the Park Lane
penthouse were always closed. There was a staff of attractive, well-dressed
young women, mostly English. Whenever Fayed entered or left a room he closed
the door behind him so that whoever was in the room could not be seen or heard.
Rarely seen was Fayed’s second wife, the former Heini Wathén, a Finnish model
whom he married in 1985.
Before
Harrods, Fayed deliberately avoided the limelight. Only afterwards did he
develop his appetite for publicity. Once he had acquired the Knightsbridge
landmark – selling the remaining Fraser stores to refinance the bank loans
possibly used to repay the Sultan of Brunei after that connection was severed –
he pursued the prestige and influence he assumed owning a store with royal
customers would bring.
Fayed had
mastered the ace facilitator’s art of finding out what a person wanted and
providing it. His generosity was boundless, if not declined. Then he would not
repeat the mistake so as not to offend. But if a gift or favour was accepted,
any subsequent failure to respond as required provoked rage and revenge.
Fayed honed
these techniques as he moved ever more successfully through Saudi Arabia,
Haiti, Dubai, Brunei and France. In Britain he applied them ruthlessly to reach
sources of influence – politicians, peers, police and the press. The Harrods
hamper list, free shopping and stays at the Ritz were his bait. But there were
no free lunches with Fayed.
People underestimated Fayed to their cost. But he
failed to see that his behaviour closed the door to acceptance in Britain
Because of
his foul-mouthed jokiness, buffoonish behaviour and self-caricature, it was
easy to underestimate Fayed. Many did to their cost. He had a shrewd and finely
tuned appreciation of human nature. But he refused to recognise that his image
and actions closed the door to his acceptance in Britain, no matter how hard
and often he knocked.
The rebuffs
fuelled Fayed’s darker side. A dangerous opponent, he would make the wildest
allegations in public as well as private against enemies or those he blamed for
setbacks. He fabricated documents and paid witnesses to perjure themselves. It
was often difficult to detect whether Fayed himself believed the allegations he
repeated with such conviction.
Fayed was a
man without brakes. Nobody around him said “no”. His brothers Ali and Salah
always deferred to him while sometimes shaking their heads at his antics.
A former
Harrods finance director was removed by the police from an aircraft at Heathrow
amid bribery allegations that were quickly dismissed. In Dubai, the executive
Christoph Bettermann was less fortunate. He spent three years fighting civil
and criminal proceedings after Fayed made allegations of theft before he was
acquitted and the civil case dismissed. Employees’ telephones were routinely
bugged.
Rowland’s
safe deposit box at Harrods was burgled – Fayed was questioned by Scotland Yard
in 1998, but not charged. This was another reason why he was refused a
passport. Fayed unsuccessfully sued the Metropolitan police. He settled a legal
action by Rowland’s widow, Josie, in 2000.
There were
repeated allegations of sexual harassment of female staff. Some who complained
were accused of theft and on occasions arrested by local police only too
willing to accept allegations (later dropped) from a powerful patron.
In 2009 the
Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge Fayed over the claim he had
sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl at the store. Fayed had been interviewed
by Scotland Yard under caution. He was interviewed again in 2013 after a woman
alleged he had sexually attacked her at his Park Lane apartment after a job
interview. The police reopened the case in 2015 but took no further action.
Fayed always denied the allegations.
Further
sexual harassment allegations were made by former Harrods employees in a
Channel 4 documentary in 2017 and to Channel 4 News in 2018. One ex-employee
claimed to have accepted £60,000 to drop a sexual harassment claim. Fayed again
denied the allegations and the police took no action.
Harrods was more a must-see for tourists than a
must-spend. Only when Fayed's involvement waned did trading improve
Despite
massive investment, Fayed failed to make Harrods a retailing success story.
More than 40 directors came and went, most sacked, some quit, as retail experts
tired of Fayed’s tantrums and micromanaging. Only when his involvement waned
did trading improve. Harrods was more a must-see for tourists than a
must-spend. Burdened by huge bank borrowings, it struggled to match more
professionally run rivals.
But there
was enough coming through the tills to pay for the Fayed lifestyle of houses,
helicopters, jets and yachts, as well as extensive “walking-round” money –
usually wads of £50 notes. Channelled through offshore tax-haven bank accounts,
companies and trusts, millions came back into Britain to fund Fayed’s failed
media ambitions with Punch magazine and commercial radio plus, particularly,
Fulham football club.
This bid
for popular appeal – which included hiring the England hero Kevin Keegan as
manager – won over Fulham fans but ultimately cost Fayed more than £200m. He
sold the club in 2013 for £121m.
In 2019
Fayed, his wife and his son Omar stepped down as directors of the Paris Ritz.
However, the hotel remained in family control.
The
revelation, during the 1999 failed libel trial brought by Hamilton, that Fayed
drew large amounts of cash from Harrods bank accounts and enjoyed other
benefits sparked an Inland Revenue investigation. A cosy deal under which Fayed
had paid a fixed amount in tax with no questions asked about his income was
cancelled by the courts as illegal in 2002.
In 2003,
the man who claimed to love Britain so much left for tax exile in Switzerland,
declaring he was once more the victim of perfidious Albion. But he soon tired
of Gstaad and returned two years later after cutting a different tax deal.
Fayed’s
cavalier attitude towards the truth was demonstrated again when it came to
selling Harrods in May 2010. Secretly negotiating for many months, Fayed
consistently denied to the Harrods staff and the media that he had any
intention of selling – ever. “I put two fingers up to them all. It is not for
sale,” he told the Sunday Times, a month before Harrods was sold by Fayed
family trusts to the Qatar sovereign wealth fund for just under £900m. The
Qataris also assumed bank debts of nearly £600m. In the event Fayed was not
buried, as he once promised, in a pharoah-style mausoleum atop the
Knightsbridge store.
He is
survived by Heini and their children, Jasmine, Karim, Camilla and Omar.
Mohamed Al Fayed, businessman, born 27 January
1929; died 30 August 2023
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