A lawyer who helped to investigate Mohamed Al Fayed yesterday called for a public inquiry into how the Harrods tycoon ran ‘a criminal enterprise’ for decades.
Libel lawyer David Hooper, who defended Vanity Fair magazine in a legal action brought by the former Harrods boss, said a public inquiry was needed to examine Fayed’s conduct, including allegations of rapes and sexual assaults on women, intimidation of former employees and alleged police corruption.
Decisions by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) should also be subjected to public scrutiny, he said, alongside the actions of doctors who carried out intimate medical examinations on women.
Mr Hooper spoke as it emerged that more than 400 people have now come forward to say they were victims or witnesses to sexual misconduct by Fayed, following a BBC documentary. Lawyers for women who say they were abused by Fayed said some of the tycoon’s ‘enablers’ were still alive, meaning they could potentially still face justice.
Fayed ran Harrods for more than two decades until he sold it in 2010. There is no suggestion of wrong-doing by the world-famous store’s current owners or managers.
Speaking exclusively to the Mail, Mr Hooper said it would take a public inquiry to reveal the full scale of the billionaire’s iniquity, which he condemned as ‘wrongdoing on an industrial scale’. He said: ‘Here was London’s leading store, owned by Fayed between 1986 to 2010, operating as a criminal enterprise.
‘There were payments to police, enormous sums being paid out illegally to employees and third parties, tax evasion, bugging of phones and flats, getting employees falsely arrested, unlawfully breaking into safety deposit boxes at Harrods as well as female employees being sexually assaulted and subjected to unlawful intimate medical examinations.
‘The police were getting cash and gifts to the extent that John Macnamara, a former Met Chief Superintendent and Fayed’s head of security, boasted to an informant who worked directly beneath him, ‘It’s amazing what they will do for a few readies’. Later he complained ‘how greedy the police were getting’.’ Mr Hooper, a libel lawyer, investigated Fayed when the tycoon sued Vanity Fair magazine over an article that alleged he was a serial abuser and a racist, and that he spied on his staff using phone bugs and hidden cameras. In the wake of Princess Diana’s death in 1997, the case was shut, both sides absorbing their own costs with no damages paid out.
Fayed died last year, aged 94, but questions remain over how his conduct went unchecked for decades, despite serious allegations being made to a Parliamentary committee and to police.
Detectives have been accused of turning a blind eye to the scandal after it emerged that 21 women had lodged complaints about him but the Metropolitan Police sought advice from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over charging him in just two of the cases. He was never charged with any sexual offence.
Scotland Yard and a second police force are also facing claims that its officers helped Fayed to intimidate members of his staff, including a young woman who had rejected his sexual advances. Hermina da Silva, a former nanny to Fayed’s children, threatened to sue for sexual harassment after she was propositioned at his family home in Oxted, Surrey.
She was arrested by Met Police on suspicion of theft – reportedly following a complaint from Fayed’s head of security John Macnamara, – and released without charge the following day.
A complaint was made to the Met’s internal corruption service about one of the officers involved.
Fayed later paid Miss da Silva £12,000 to settle her industrial tribunal claim.
A High Court libel trial brought against Fayed by Conservative MP Neil Hamilton heard evidence that several former employees were wrongfully arrested after crossing the Harrods boss.
They included letting agent Sandra Lewis-Glass, who handled rentals on luxury flats belonging to Fayed in Park Lane, West London. She was fired in September 1995 after she refused to lie to Westminster Council on Fayed’s behalf to save him from paying extra business rates. Four days later she was arrested at her home in Croydon, South London, after Mr Macnamara told police she had stolen two floppy disks worth around 80p, the High Court was told. She was released without charge the next day and sued Fayed for wrongful dismissal.
Mr Hooper said her arrest was ‘pure intimidation’ and said ‘concocted allegations’ had been used in many cases, adding: ‘It was diabolical what happened.’
Further allegations of police corruption are contained in a 52-page statement drafted in 1997 by Bob Loftus, who worked under Mr Macnamara at Harrods. Mr Macnamara died in 2019, aged 83. A draft copy of the statement was kept by Vanity Fair’s then editor, Henry Porter, who told the Guardian earlier this month that some Met Police officers had been ‘important enablers’ for Fayed.
The Vanity Fair case was settled out of court in 1997 following the death of Fayed’s son Dodi and Princess Diana in Paris car crash.
Separately, the Parliamentary select committee on standards and privileges heard submissions on Fayed’s behaviour, including claims that several of his former employees were wrongfully arrested after crossing him.
They included his former chief financial executive Graham Jones, who was said to have been the victim of a ‘vindictive and dishonest campaign’ by Fayed to discredit him.
Mr Jones was arrested on board a Qantas flight to Sydney, , as it waited to depart from Heathrow Airport in June 1990.
Fayed made a ‘false allegation’ of bribery to police after Mr Jones told the head of the Bank of England about alleged irregularities within Harrods Bank, and assisted Fayed’s long-time business rival Tiny Rowland.
The select committee’s report in 1997 detailed claims that Mr Macnamara was at Guildford police station when Mr Jones was interviewed, and that another Fayed associate had ‘persuaded’ police to make the arrest. It also included a meeting between Mr Jones’ lawyer and a police officer said to have ‘implied that the police were under great pressure from Fayed to arrest Jones’.
A Surrey Police spokeswoman said: ‘We have checked Force records, but have not uncovered information about this arrest in 1990 in order to be able to comment further on it at this time. We take any suggestion of undue influence extremely seriously, and we will continue to make enquiries.’
Mr Hooper said an inquiry was needed to examine all aspects of Fayed’s conduct. He told the Mail: ‘There was a consistent pattern, wrongdoing on an industrial scale. With so much wrongdoing and so many people involved, the question is who knew about this and when? A public inquiry would help prevent this happening again.’
Mr Hooper said the inquiry should also look at the conduct of the police, the CPS, and the doctors who performed intimate examinations on young female employees at Fayed’s request.
Bruce Drummond, a barrister representing the Justice for Harrods Survivors group, said: ‘The Government should investigate how a system of abuse was allowed to continue for 25 years.’
n David Hooper’s book Buying Silence, detailing Fayed’s criminal activities and cover ups, will be published by Biteback Publications in February 2025.