Five ways Mohamed Al-Fayed bought the silence of the Establishment

Veteran journalist Maureen Orth pulled no punches in her magazine profile of the controversial owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al-Fayed. She recorded: “A dozen ex-employees I spoke with said he would chase secretaries around the office and sometimes try to stuff money down women’s blouses. “A succession of women were offered the use of a free apartment on Park Lane or a luxury car.” Orth’s extensive research threw up a shocking picture of sexual harassment at the upmarket London department store, where attractive female members of staff were required to take HIV tests in case Fayed was successful in having his wicked way with them. Nor was it just women who were harassed and demeaned in this highly sexualised atmosphere.

Former Harrods workers told how Fayed would brandish a two-foot plastic penis at male visitors and ask: “How’s your c**k?” When Orth’s article was published in Vanity Fair in September 1995, Fayed sued for defamation. With a track record of ruthlessly using libel laws to silence his critics and control publicity about himself and his business operation, he was a formidable opponent. But editor Graydon Carter stood firm, refusing to be bullied, and Condé Nast, the magazine’s publisher, hired me to mount their defence in court by proving the truth of the accusations in the article.

Along with Henry Porter, the magazine’s London editor, I collected evidence of his predatory behaviour from the victims. One was as young as 15; Fayed was 79 at the time he assaulted her. Most were in their early twenties. They were striking-looking and usually blonde. They would be offered a promotion and the possibility of a career in management, only too often to end up being sexually assaulted and trafficked for sexual purposes.

Some were picked out by Fayed himself as he prowled the store, others were put forward by managers, eager to please their boss, to work in his private office and chosen for their looks rather than their skills. They were to describe to us rape, attempted rape, being drugged, trafficked, Fayed entering their bedrooms without consent, demanding sex on occasions when they had travelled with him to Paris or gone to his flats in Park Lane as part of their work, being locked in their bedrooms by Fayed, being grabbed and groped, having their clothing ripped, being forcibly kissed and having £50 notes shoved down their blouses.

If they refused Fayed’s demands, they tended to be sacked or even arrested on trumped up charges by corrupt police officers. One told us she’d been marched off the premises by a security guard holding her arm as if she’d been arrested. Those who dared complain were threatened that they would never work again if they pursued their allegations. Vanity Fair was the first to publicise the extent of Fayed’s sexual assaults and abusive treatment of young female employees.

Now, following his death in 2023 and the ’s programme Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods in 2024, hundreds of women – 421 at the time of writing – are bringing legal claims. The present owners of Harrods, who acquired the store in 2010, are absolutely appalled at the allegations. They say they are presently settling more than 250 claims for compensation brought by women alleging sexual abuse by Fayed. Ironically, outing Fayed had never been Vanity Fair’s intention.

Originally the editors had envisaged a reasonably sympathetic portrait of the Egyptian-born businessman who had recently been denied British citizenship as a result of what appeared to be prejudice and potentially unjustified hostility on the part of the British establishment. But what Orth discovered – and which we corroborated – was a working environment that was routinely abusive and invasive. If you were young, female and worked for Fayed in any capacity, you were at risk. Like the young woman he invited onto his yacht to advise on its refurbishment and then tried to imprison and sexually assault.

Or the young girl who had just left school and who, after forcibly kissing her on the lips, he tried to sleep with by deceiving her into thinking she would get a part in his producer son Dodi’s projected film about Peter Pan. His controlling behaviour was exemplified by his demand that any women who worked in his office should have to undergo intimate gynaecological tests, irrespective of their wishes, age or state of health. When one woman complained to the doctor about the procedure, she was told that if she refused, “Mr Al Fayed will want to know why”. Reluctantly, she agreed.

Just as shocking as this coercive treatment was that doctors could think it appropriate to conduct such tests, overriding the women’s objections by telling them their future employment depended on taking them and then sending the results to Fayed without their consent. Through our investigations, we became aware of seven doctors who had, in varying degrees, some involvement in these medical tests. Some, no doubt, confined themselves to perfectly proper and lawful medical examinations, and we know of one in-house doctor who refused to carry out unnecessarily intimate examinations, only for the tests to be outsourced to more accommodating Harley Street doctors.

But at one legal hearing, the judge was visibly shocked by an affidavit from one of the female doctors, Dr Ann Coxon, which made it apparent that she had conducted more than 400 such examinations between 1989 and 1995. For the record, Dr Coxon denies carrying out any sexual health tests on employees for Fayed. One of the young women we spoke to told us the tests were both intrusive and unwarranted. When she asked if Fayed would see the results, the doctor told her not to worry. It would be put on his desk but he would not read it, she was improbably told, because he was “a lovely, kind and benevolent man”.

The tests did get sent to Fayed and often he commented on them in highly offensive terms and propositioned the women.

From our investigations, it was obvious to us that a very large number of people at the store had a pretty good idea of what was going on, but regrettably chose not to speak out. Pelham Spong, an American who worked for Fayed as an executive assistant in 2008, complained to the General Medical Council about being required, as a condition of her employment, to have an intrusive and unjustifiable medical examination, carried out by another doctor, Wendy Snell.

The GMC cravenly ducked the issue, stating it had “no power to investigate, resolve or comment on whether a gynaecological examination should have formed part of your recruitment process”.

She also complained to the police about being assaulted by Fayed but was told they did not have enough evidence to refer the matter to the Crown Prosecution Service – notwithstanding her unequivocal account and her documentation as to time and place.

The late John Macnamara, Fayed’s director of security and a former detective chief superintendent, used his corrupt links with the police to ensure these allegations never resulted in charges.

A number of young women told us about invasive gynaecological examinations conducted by Snell and Coxon at the request of Fayed. They were falsely reassured that the procedures were necessary and would be kept confidential, only to find that Fayed knew the results.

Other women have more recently come forward with similar allegations about Snell, who is no longer alive.

The GMC also declined to investigate a complaint made in 2017 about a similarly intrusive gynaecological test with the report being shown to Fayed without consent.

The watchdog now says it will, if they identify any potential fitness to practise concerns, ‘thoroughly examine all relevant information and take action as appropriate’. This all comes rather late in the day.

Fayed’s lawyers used every device they could to discredit and intimidate Henry Porter and me as we sought to prove the accusations against “the chairman”.

In May 1997 we felt compelled to lodge a complaint with the Attorney General about attempts to intimidate witnesses.

Then Fayed’s bodyguard, Paul Handley-Greaves, turned up at my office in an optimistic attempt to discredit me in a sting. He claimed he had been sacked for making a fellow Harrods employee pregnant but said he had retained a compromising video tape of Fayed. Needless to say, the tape did not exist.

By now the case was decisively swinging in our direction.

A judge commented that we had a good prospect of winning even if we proved only 75% of what we had already included in our evidence.

He also ordered the disclosure of the full medical examinations of Fayed’s personal staff and senior management staff, which I have little doubt would have been the kiss of death for the libel action, opening the floodgates to claims against Fayed from victims of sexual assault.

In the end, we never got to see those medical reports, and I don’t believe it was a coincidence that, around this time, Fayed’s spokesman, former royal correspondent, Michael Cole, made overtures to settle the litigation out of court.

It says something revealing about the murky world of Fayed that Cole insisted the preliminary meeting with Nicholas Coleridge, managing director of Condé Nast, should take place in the steam room of a London club without so much as their Speedos on, so that he could be sure that the meeting was not being recorded.

Then, at the end of August 1997, Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were killed in Paris and it seemed appropriate to accept Fayed’s proposals to drop the case.

Indeed, there was little alternative.

The unfortunate consequence was that Fayed was able to continue his criminal conduct.

I find it appalling that, though we were successful in establishing the truth of Vanity Fair’s profile of Fayed, he was able to cover up his crimes for the next 27 years until his death.

Aggressive lawyers and skilful public relations advisers, often with the threat of removing advertising, managed to suppress broadcasts and articles exposing his conduct.

Fayed himself was also a master at manipulating the system. In December last year, his youngest son, Omar, claimed his father had faked having dementia to avoid being prosecuted for sexual assault. He “got off the hook on the grounds he was mentally incapacitated” but “afterwards it was back to business – he was as sharp as a tack”.

He got away with it, as usual.

An inquiry should now examine the crimes that were systematically being committed, including serious sexual assaults, police corruption and just how many at Harrods at the time knew just what was going on.

It should query just how far aggressive lawyers can overlook the truth in making their client’s case and question whether the guidelines of the GMC need to be tightened so that the apparent misconduct of doctors of the sort highlighted in the Harrods saga is properly addressed.

• Extracted from Buying Silence: How oligarchs, corporations and plutocrats use the law to gag their critics, by David Hooper. Published by Biteback, priced £11.99, on March 20