1. Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al-Fayed was an Egyptian businessman whose residence and primary business interests were in the United Kingdom from the mid-1960s.
80 Facts About Mohamed Al-Fayed
1. 2.
At the age of nineteen Mohamed Al-Fayed was selling bottles of Coca-Cola on the streets of Alexandria, and sold Singer sewing machines at the age of twenty-one.
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In 1952 Mohamed Al-Fayed was hired by a friend, Tousson El Barrawi, and the seventeen-year-old Adnan Khashoggi for their furniture import business.
4.
Carasso later claimed that Mohamed Al-Fayed had defaulted on the agreed payment for his business.
5.
On 12 June 1964, Mohamed Al-Fayed arrived in Haiti, then under the control of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier.
6.
Mohamed Al-Fayed terminated his stay in Haiti six months later when a sample of "crude oil" provided by Haitian associates proved to be low-grade molasses.
7.
Mohamed Al-Fayed promised to use his connections in Dubai to help bring investment to the Caribbean island, if they allowed him to build an oil refinery, and develop the wharf at Port-au-Prince.
8.
Mohamed Al-Fayed had exclusive control over the collection of fees for docking, unloading, and loading at Haiti's main port, and this caused resentment in the Haitian shipping industry.
9.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was 'tapped' for $30,000 by Duvalier, but rather than pay, and fearful of the growing anger of the shipping agents, he left Haiti in December 1964.
10.
Ingratiating himself in London's Arab expatriate community, Mohamed Al-Fayed met an Iraqi businessman, Salim Abu Alwan, and through Alwan was introduced to Mahdi Al Tajir.
11.
Rochlitz's Jewish ancestry caused embarrassment to Tajir, and later caused Rochlitz to reject Mohamed Al-Fayed's offer of a formal partnership.
12.
Mohamed Al-Fayed assisted in securing finance for the Dubai World Trade Centre.
13.
In 1974 Mohamed Al-Fayed met Roland 'Tiny' Rowland, a British businessman with extensive interests in Southern Africa, and the chairman of international conglomerate Lonrho.
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Mohamed Al-Fayed soon became alarmed at Rowland's use of Lonrho's money to fund his lifestyle and to pay large bribes in Africa, as well as his syphoning off company profits into a secret bank account in Switzerland.
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The British Department of Trade and Industry began to investigate Lonrho in early 1976, and an alarmed Mohamed Al-Fayed quit the company in May 1976.
16.
Tajir's influence in Dubai was waning by 1977, and Mohamed Al-Fayed was excluded from the commission process for a new aluminium smelter, and the development of Jebel Ali, putting Costain's future profits at risk.
17.
In 1993 Mohamed Al-Fayed was visited at Harrods by Mohammed Alabbar, the director of Dubai's Department of Economic Development.
18.
Tajir was challenged in the British courts to repay his alleged excessive profits earned from the construction of Dubai's aluminium smelter, and Mohamed Al-Fayed was targeted over his management contract of the Dubai World Trade Centre.
19.
Mohamed Al-Fayed's lawyer informed the court that morning that he had been taken seriously ill with neck and back complications, and could not fly to Dubai as a result.
20.
Mohamed Al-Fayed became a financial adviser to the then Sultan of Brunei Omar Ali Saifuddien III in 1966.
21.
Mohamed Al-Fayed told Maureen Orth that he had known Hassanal Bolkiah, who succeeded Saifuddien on his abdication, since the sultan's childhood and that they had met during the building of a trade centre in Brunei.
22.
Tiny Rowland told DTI inspectors that Mohamed Al-Fayed had told him that he negotiated an introduction to the sultan for $500,000 plus a percentage of any resulting business with an Indian holy man and alleged fraudster, Shri Chandra Swamiji Maharaj.
23.
In mid-1984 Mohamed Al-Fayed received several powers of attorney and written authorisations from the sultan to carry out tasks for him.
24.
RBS assumed that the money belonged to the sultan, but Mohamed Al-Fayed told the bank that his portfolio was separate from the sultan's.
25.
Mohamed Al-Fayed accompanied the sultan to 10 Downing Street to visit Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in January 1985, with sterling in decline and threatening the economy.
26.
Mohamed Al-Fayed took credit for this and for persuading the sultan to give half a billion pounds of contracts to British defence industries.
27.
Mohamed Al-Fayed unsuccessfully applied for British citizenship twice, in 1994 and 1999.
28.
In January 1997 Mohamed Al-Fayed established a new political organisation, The People's Trust, to promote a crusade against a "culture of violence".
29.
Mohamed Al-Fayed invited Tom Bower to write his biography in 1996.
30.
Mohamed Al-Fayed announced his intention to sue, but withdrew his suit.
31.
The former MP has always denied that he was paid by Mohamed Al-Fayed for asking questions in Parliament.
32.
Mohamed Al-Fayed moored a yacht called the Sokar in Monaco prior to selling it in 2014.
33.
The Mohamed Al-Fayed brothers claimed they were from a family of wealthy cotton traders.
34.
Mohamed Al-Fayed employed accountants and solicitors, private detectives and freelance journalists in an operation, said to cost many millions of pounds, that was beyond the scope of any newspaper inquiry.
35.
Illicit bugging devices were used and some of the money went in bribes to officials to unearth incriminating documents in Egypt, Haiti, Dubai, Brunei, France and Switzerland, allegedly proving fraudulent dealings by Mohamed Al-Fayed and showing his humble origins and limited net worth.
36.
The DTI report said that the Mohamed Al-Fayed brothers had 'dishonestly represented their origins, their wealth, their business interests and their resources to the Secretary of State, to the Office of Fair Trading, to the House of Fraser board and shareholders, and their own advisers' Rowland and the Lohnro group had previously been strongly criticised by a 1976 DTI report, and had been described by Prime Minister Edward Heath as "an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism".
37.
Mohamed Al-Fayed accused me of breaking our trust by talking to these people.
38.
Mohamed Al-Fayed wrote to the ruler of Sharjah, and accused Bettermann of stealing large sums of money.
39.
Mohamed Al-Fayed delighted in retail theatre, and during his 25 years at Harrods dressed as a Harrods doorman, a boy scout and Father Christmas over the years.
40.
The artist and designer, William Mitchell, was hired by Mohamed Al-Fayed to create an 'entertaining retail environment'; this resulted in the creation of an Egyptian Hall on the ground floor of Harrods and, following its success, the Egyptian Escalators, which replaced the store's central lifts.
41.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was concerned by the loyalty of his staff, and employed two young Greek women as spies, to report on their fellow employees.
42.
Mohamed Al-Fayed liked them light-skinned, well educated, English, and young.
43.
Mohamed Al-Fayed later said that he decided to sell Harrods following the difficulty in getting his dividend approved by the trustee of the Harrods pension fund.
44.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was appointed honorary chairman of Harrods, for six months.
45.
From an initial 4.8 hectares, Mohamed Al-Fayed went on to build the estate up to 26,300 hectares.
46.
Mohamed Al-Fayed then donated the statue to the National Football Museum.
47.
In July 2013, it was announced that Mohamed Al-Fayed had sold the club to Pakistani American businessman Shahid Khan, who owns the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars.
48.
In 1996 Mohamed Al-Fayed established Liberty Publishing, with the goal of the company stated as "to launch and acquire or take strategic interests in significant media businesses".
49.
Mohamed Al-Fayed had failed in bids to buy the newspaper Today from Lonrho in 1986 and from News International in 1995.
50.
Mohamed Al-Fayed believed that the British government had put pressure on Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News International not to sell the newspaper to him.
51.
All three buildings were secretly connected to the Dorchester Hotel, which Mohamed Al-Fayed purchased for Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei.
52.
Mohamed Al-Fayed originally won a share of the oil proceeds at the High Court, but was later told by appeal judges he could only claim damages.
53.
Bocardo SA was a company owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed that owned his estates in Scotland and Surrey; it was based in Liechtenstein.
54.
Mohamed Al-Fayed worked with his brother-in-law, Saudi Arabian arms dealer and businessman Adnan Khashoggi.
55.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was an international celebrity and a frequent visitor to Harrods in the 1980s.
56.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was hosted by Al-Fayed in the south of France in mid-1997, with her sons, Princes William and Harry.
57.
From February 1998, Mohamed Al-Fayed maintained that the crash was a result of a conspiracy, and later contended that the crash was orchestrated by MI6 on the instructions of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
58.
Mohamed Al-Fayed's claims were dismissed by a French judicial investigation, but Fayed appealed the verdict.
59.
Mohamed Al-Fayed first claimed that the Princess was pregnant to the Daily Express in May 2001, and that he was the only person who had been told.
60.
Lawyers representing Mohamed Al-Fayed later accepted at the inquest that there was no direct evidence that either the Duke of Edinburgh or MI6 were involved in any murder conspiracy involving Diana or Dodi.
61.
Mohamed Al-Fayed's admissions related to the lack of evidence for Al-Fayed's claims of the Princess's pregnancy and the couple's engagement.
62.
Mohamed Al-Fayed's lawyers accepted that there was no evidence to support the assertion that Diana was illegally embalmed to conceal pregnancy, or that a pregnancy could be confirmed by any medical evidence.
63.
Journalist Dominic Lawson wrote in The Independent in 2008 that Al-Fayed sought to concoct "a conspiracy to cover up the true circumstances" of fatalities caused by the crash "involving an intoxicated and over-excited driver ".
64.
Mohamed Al-Fayed financially supported Unlawful Killing, a documentary film presenting his version of events.
65.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was born an Egyptian citizen, entered Haiti on a Kuwaiti passport, and left Haiti with a Haitian diplomatic passport with which he entered the United Kingdom in 1964.
66.
In 1970 Mohamed Al-Fayed informed Mahdi Al Tajir that he and his brothers' Haitian diplomatic passports had expired, and their Egyptian passports made it difficult for them to obtain visas in many countries.
67.
Mohamed and Ali Al-Fayed applied for British citizenship in early 1993.
68.
Ali Mohamed Al-Fayed had had his request for citizenship granted in March 1999.
69.
The rejection was attributed to Mohamed Al-Fayed's admitting that he bribed politicians and his breaking in to safety deposit boxes in Harrods.
70.
Mohamed Al-Fayed described the decision as "perverse" and said he was a victim of the British establishment and "zombie" politicians.
71.
Mohamed Al-Fayed died in London on 30 August 2023, at the age of 94.
72.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was buried that day at Barrow Green Court alongside Dodi, after a funeral service during Friday prayers at London Central Mosque.
73.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was portrayed by Salim Daw in seasons 5 and 6 of The Crown.
74.
Mohamed Al-Fayed appeared on an episode of Da Ali G Show in 2000, and the Howard Stern Show in 2007.
75.
Mohamed Al-Fayed appeared on the 2011 edition of British Celebrity Big Brother, and set the housemates a task based on dressing up as ancient Egyptian mummies.
76.
Mohamed Al-Fayed sued Vanity Fair, resulting in a settlement with no damages paid, but requiring Vanity Fair to place all evidence in locked storage.
77.
The programme alleged Mohamed Al-Fayed targeted young employees over a 13-year period.
78.
FC, Gaute Haugenes said in September 2024 that to protect players from Mohamed Al-Fayed they were not allowed to be left alone with him.
79.
Mohamed Al-Fayed said that members of staff were aware that he "liked young, blonde girls".
80.
In September 2024, it has been reported that Kristina Svensson, who worked at Ritz hotel, will be the first victim to file a complaint against Mohamed Al-Fayed Al Fayed in France, while previously the focus was on London.