Police are investigating astonishing claims that corrupt detectives working for Mohamed Al Fayed deceived one of his victims by staging an elaborate ruse involving a bogus MI5 officer and a bugged flat.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal the woman was urgently summoned to Scotland Yard on the pretext of a ‘national security’ matter.
Once there, the rogue detectives told her the security services needed to install covert surveillance equipment inside her London home and, she says, ordered her to sign what they claimed was the Official Secrets Act.
The detectives then instructed her to give her flat keys to an ‘MI5 officer’ and warned her never to discuss the matter or face criminal prosecution.
Only days earlier the woman had applied for a sensitive job within Fayed’s inner circle. She was later assaulted by him.
For years she assumed the surveillance at her flat was somehow linked to a counter terrorism operation, but it was not until it was revealed last year that Fayed raped female staff, spied on employees and bribed detectives, that she connected it to his predatory behaviour.
‘At the time I believed it was all legitimate,’ said the woman. ‘I grew up trusting the police. They were there to look after us.
‘It never occurred to me – an educated, professional woman – that they might not be telling me the truth, that they might be in on it. Some might think me naive but part of this whole ruse took place inside Scotland Yard.’
Now in her 40s and a well-regarded businesswoman, she tells The Mail on Sunday in an interview that she believes the deception was designed to dissuade her from discussing Fayed in her home.
Others have described how the billionaire Harrods owner used similar tactics to control staff, and how he even liked them to know they were being watched and overheard.
It is known that Fayed’s security chief established improper links with police, once boasting that it was ‘amazing what they would do for a few readies’.
What is disturbing about the businesswoman’s story, however, is that it suggests Fayed’s malign influence extended much further than previously thought – to within the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police itself.
She has supplied police investigating the tycoon’s complex criminal network with a compelling timeline of evidence, including text messages and other documentation.
Perhaps most revealing of all is a hotel invoice covering the three-day period when, she says, she was asked to vacate her flat while the surveillance equipment was installed. The MoS’s own inquiries have established that MI5 had no involvement or knowledge of these events.
Sources insist that had the operation been genuine, it is likely she would have been moved into modest accommodation. But she was billeted in a £800-a-night junior suite at one of London’s finest hotels, Grosvenor House on Park Lane, which just happens to be less than 200 metres away from Fayed’s own residence.
Her evidence is now part of the wide-ranging inquiry by the Met’s Complex Investigation Team into Fayed’s offending and those who helped him. The inquiry also covers misconduct and corruption.
A Met source told us: ‘Any information suggesting misconduct by serving or former officers will be referred to the Directorate of Professional Standards for further fact finding and assessment prior to any decision to investigate further.’
The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said she was contacted out of the blue on February 28, 2011, by a man purporting to be an MI5 officer but who in reality she believes was working for Fayed. He used the name David Rutherford.
Obeying Rutherford’s instructions, she went directly to Scotland Yard after work where she claims she gave a name he supplied to a receptionist.
After waiting in the foyer for several minutes two plain clothes officers ‘wearing lanyards then came down and introduced themselves. They showed me their police badges in leather wallets’.
According to the woman they ushered her through a swipe-card security door to a small interview-style room off a corridor on the ground floor.
She said: ‘The room was grey with a table in the middle. I sat one side and they were facing me.
‘They said they needed the flat for surveillance but wouldn’t say for what. They needed to install equipment but that it wouldn’t be visible and MI5 agents would dress as builders so as not to arouse suspicion.
‘They kept saying that they couldn’t divulge what it was all about but that it was a matter of national security.
‘I told them I was worried but they said something like, “You’re going to have to trust us”. I was given a copy of what they said was the Official Secrets Act. One of them pulled it out of a folder.
‘I remember being shocked by this as it wasn’t what I expected. I was told I had to sign it, which I did. But I wasn’t given a copy. The officers told me they would arrange for an MI5 agent to meet me in a few days and collect my keys and that I would be put up in a hotel while the surveillance equipment was installed.
‘They said I’d never find what they installed and actually challenged me to try to find the bugs. I never did.’
Former Tory MP and security expert Dr Bob Seely told the MoS: ‘I can’t imagine any circumstances in which anyone genuinely representing the security services would have asked this lady to sign any official secrets act or behave in this way. We know that Fayed worked with corrupt former and possibly serving police officers and this may have been an example of him using them to fool a trusting female member of the public.’
The woman, in her twenties at the time, was told by the Scotland Yard officers to meet Rutherford at a Starbucks near the Embankment in London where she handed over ‘a bunch of keys.’
‘He was around 30 with sandy coloured hair, swarthy, and with a Northern Irish accent,’ she said. ‘He was wearing a leather bomber jacket. He told me I was being put up in the Grosvenor House. It felt like something out of the movies.
‘When I got to the hotel later, he was there with another guy and he gave me the room card.
‘I couldn’t believe how grand it all was – a suite. Someone came in the day after I left and the account was settled in cash.
‘On the very same day of checking out of the hotel, I was emailed by the job recruitment agency to say I had an interview with my prospective employer. It was only later that I was told the job was with the Fayed family.’
She was told by Rutherford that if she talked about the surveillance operation she would be in danger and that providing she never did she would be safe. Because of this she still fears being identified.
At the time, believing that cameras were installed in her flat, the woman was too scared to discuss anything personal and stuck instead to mundane conversations with others in the flat, including her boyfriend and other visitors. ‘If we needed to say anything to each other, we’d discuss it on a walk. Or we spoke in code,’ she said.
And in disturbing echoes of her experience, other Fayed victims also resorted to speaking to each other in code, which was eventually deciphered by his security staff who listened in on their conversations.
In many cases Fayed wanted his victims to know that they were being spied on − to prevent them discussing him. For the same reason, former female Harrods employees say they were forbidden from lunching with colleagues.
And one woman described how she was once on her bed talking on the phone to Fayed when to her horror he asked her why she was lying with her legs up against the wall. She knew instantly that there were cameras in the room.
The businesswoman worked for Fayed for nearly a year and continued to do so after being assaulted because she couldn’t afford to lose her job. Like so many other women she was too fearful to complain.
Given that in common with other victims she was subjected to an internal medical examination, with the results sent to Fayed, it seems likely the attack was premeditated.
‘Because I was working directly for the family, it makes sense that Fayed would go to extreme lengths to silence me through fear and intimidation,’ she said.
She doesn’t know for certain if cameras were installed – she never found them – only that she was led to believe they were. Either way, the ploy had the desired effect. The woman was too terrified to ever discuss her experiences working for Fayed.
‘It seems very plausible that those Scotland Yard police officers were in the pay of Fayed,’ she concludes. In 2016, the woman’s flat was put up for sale and another ‘MI5’ officer collected the keys. As before, the flat was vacated while the work was carried out.
Dr Seely added: ‘Fayed was a thoroughly evil man, and it is appalling that he was able to effectively become above the law by corrupting those around him whilst targeting women.’
A former Harrods employee, Rachael Louw, who claims she was assaulted by both Mohamed Fayed and his brother Salah, spoke of a similar experience.
‘Salah told me that Fayed’s head of security had bugged my rented flat and that he was ex-MI5,’ she said. ‘I believed him. That was terrifying to hear. Now I know it was another way of keeping tabs on what people were talking about and making sure we weren’t talking about the family.’
‘It seems this ruse [was] developed over the years to the point where Fayed security impersonated MI5 in order to achieve their nefarious goals. It is isolating, intimidating and achieves the effect of silencing victims. It makes you feel powerless, scared and constantly on edge.’
Her sentiments are echoed by the anonymous woman.
‘I signed fake documents I believed to be genuine, thinking for 14 years I was bound by them. I’d told no one in all that time. The assault was one thing, it should never have happened, but it is the surveillance side of things that keeps me up at night.
‘I am proof that he was offending after that. It is far more than the sexual assaults that police should be dealing with, it is the wider scale surveillance and intimidation that left so many of us terrified. The experience has left me paranoid and untrusting of people.’
She now wants a public inquiry into state-sanctioned surveillance and police corruption.
The Met Police said in a statement: ‘We continue to support all victims and we urge anyone with information, whether they were directly affected by Mohamed Al Fayed’s actions or aware of others who may have been involved or committed offences, to come forward.
‘We are committed to thoroughly reviewing all information relating to historical allegations in the case of Mohamed Al Fayed, which includes our Directorate of Professional Standards assessing any indication of police misconduct.’