Mohamed Al Fayed, the late billionaire and former owner of luxury department store Harrods has been accused of sexual abuse, with some of it alleged to have taken place at a home linked to the royals
Mohammed Al Fayed is alleged to have sexually assaulted women at a home linked to the royals that featured in hit Netflix drama The Crown.
At least 100 women who were ex-staff at the late tycoon’s luxury Harrods store, allege they were attacked across 24 years. Five accuse him of rape. A new BBC documentary also claims Al Fayed deployed an army of aides to silence his alleged victims and used his power and wealth to evade justice.
The string of alleged attacks are said to have taken place at Al Fayed’s Park Lane apartment in London, St Tropez and Abu Dhabi. Meanwhile another place where assaults are alleged to have happened is ‘Villa Windsor’ in Paris and in the new documentary, called Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods, one of his former employees claims she was raped by him there.
Al Fayed was the owner of a French mansion once owned by the late Queen’s uncle, the Duke of Windsor who abdicated from the throne in 1936 – and he even turned it into a museum of sorts to the British monarchy. ‘Villa Windsor’, as Al Fayed came to call it, is a 14-room mansion on the outskirts of Paris. The incredible building was the home of King Edward VIII and his American divorcee wife Wallis Simpson from 1952 until 1986.
When Ms Simpson died that year, Al Fayed took out a 50-year lease on the property for the sum of 1million Francs per year. The lease also required him to spend 30million Francs in total on renovating the property, which had slowly begun to fall into a state of minor disrepair.
“It’s like a mausoleum,” Al Fayed told People Magazine in a 1990 interview, having spent somewhere in the region of £10.5million in total on sprucing up the villa. “It sometimes gives you the creeps—both of them having died here. But it’s still a happy place, a great fantasy which I love to live in.”
Al Fayed, whose son Dodi died in a car crash alongside Princess Diana in 1997, even went the extra mile when it came to recruitment. So keen was the millionaire to maintain an authentic royal experience at the villa that he hired the former Duke of Edinburgh’s ex-valet, Sydney Johnson, to oversee renovations at the property and curate a private collection of royal memorabilia to be stored at the site.
In February 1998, a collection of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s personal possessions that had been held at the villa was put up for auction by Al Fayed. Amongst the items were 10,000 private photographs, the desk used by the Duke of Windsor himself and a small doll given to King Edward VIII by his mother Queen Mary.
It’s believed he had spent around £4million on purchasing the items in the first place, and they were split across 3,200 different lots. All profits from the sale went to the Dodi Fayed International Charitable Foundation and causes associated with the late Princess of Wales.
In season five of The Crown, Diana’s unlikely friendship with Al Fayed features heavily and shows him growing closer to the royals. His character is seen talking about restoring ‘Villa Windsor’ saying it will be his “gift to the British Royal Family “. However, The Crown did not film at the actual property.
Al Fayed died aged 94 in August last year. Harrods’ owners said they were “utterly appalled” by the allegations and apologised for the fact that his victims had been failed. Met Commander Kevin Southworth said: “We are aware of various allegations of sexual offences made over a number of years in relation to the late Mohammed Al Fayed which were reported to us. If further information comes to light it will be assessed.”
