Harrods is facing new claims from 23 women who have come forward to claim that they were raped and sexually abused by the shamed former owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, can reveal.
Lawyers working for the women said today that they were now dealing with claims from 60 former employees against the billionaire tycoon.
Barrister Dean Armstrong KC — representing the Fayed victims — claimed the Egyptian tycoon, who died last year aged 94, was ‘enabled by a system that pervaded Harrods’.
It comes as London’s Met Police urged sex assault victims of Fayed to come forward — and vowed to ‘fully explore whether any other individuals could be pursued for any criminal offences’ – with those who worked closely with him facing calls to assist the investigation.
Last night, sources told ‘dynamite’ new testimony was set to widen the scandal and could drag in Fulham FC, which the late Egyptian tycoon owned for 16 years.
And victims are asking those linked to the ex-Harrods chairman to shed light on his behaviour.
They include Harrods MD Michael Ward — who took over the role in 2006, four years before Fayed sold the store — and the late Egyptian’s long-serving spokesman Michael Cole.
Speaking yesterday, Mr Ward said he was ‘not aware of his criminality and abuse’ and described it as a ‘shameful period in the business’ history’.
He announced that an independent review was underway adding that Fayed had ‘presided over a toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation, fear of repercussion and sexual misconduct’.
Fayed’s spokesman and former BBC Royal Correspondent Cole, now 81, has not spoken publicly since the allegations emerged.
His wife Jane, 82, told that her husband, who worked for Fayed from 1988 to 1998, knew nothing of the rape and sexual assault allegations.
Speaking from the family home in Suffolk, she said that BBC documentary and podcast Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods had come as a ‘shock’ to them both.
In 1995, Vanity Fair published an article alleging racism, staff surveillance and sexual misconduct by him against Harrods staff.
Fayed sued for libel and the case was dropped in 1997 after Cole led negotiations which resulted in a settlement that saw Vanity Fair agree to destroy its evidence.
A number of the claimants also told the BBC that Harley Street doctor Ann Coxon had carried out invasive sexual health tests on a number of the victims. The results were then allegedly passed onto Fayed.
When asked for comment about the allegations, Dr Coxon, who is now 84, said she did not regret working for Fayed.
Breaking cover for the first time at her West London home earlier this week, the doctor denied carrying out medical examinations on young women on the behest of the late Harrods boss.
The group representing the alleged survivors, however, has reported the practitioner to the General Medical Council (GMC) as she still holds a licence to practice in the world-renowned luxury clinic in west London.
Another female doctor accused of carrying out the STD tests, Wendy Snell, has since died. Others include former head of security John MacNamara, who has been accused of threatening an alleged victim, stopping her from speaking out against Fayed.
Meanwhile convicted paedophile Max Clifford, who was once Fayed’s PR guru, called the billionaire a ‘randy old sod’.
He was jailed in April 2014 for indecent assault of three teenagers but died from a heart attack three years later.
Concerns have also been raised about the role of a female fixer dubbed ‘Fayed’s Ghislaine Maxwell’, who investigators were told found young women to introduce to him.
This week a then-teenage girl told how the glamorous associate would frequent wealthy areas of west London dressed in designer clothes and driving a Porsche.
She would approach attractive young women and build a rapport with them by boasting of her wealth and success before offering to introduce them to her rich businessman ‘friend’.
She would then drive them to Fayed’s Park Lane penthouse apartment – even boasting she found him a different girl ‘every couple of months’ but only when she finds somebody she considered ‘worth it’.
The girl said how during a meeting at his apartment at 60 Park Lane, the then 84-year-old Fayed offered her a salary of £2,500-a-month and a free designer handbag of her choice from Harrods in return for sex. He also allegedly suggested she could spend some time on his yacht in St Tropez.
A source said: ‘She worked for Fayed and became his key fixer.
‘She helped him find women. She was even interviewed once by the police but it came to nothing.’
Investigators probing the scandal also believe Sarah Andrews, Harrods’ chief retail officer, who has worked at the luxury department store since 2003, could provide information on Fayed.
They also believe that Kelly Walker-Duncalf, who has now married to become Kelly Gilmour and now runs her own recruitment firm could also provide information that could assist the investigation.
She joined the company in 1997 and worked her way up to become chief of store approvals, before leaving in 2013.
Marigay McKee, who also worked at Harrods from 1999 to 2013, has not commented on any of the allegations made.