LONDON — London police said on Friday that another 40 women had accused the late owner of Harrods of rape or sexual assault. Mohammed Al Fayed since the BBC aired the claims of several former employees of the London department store last month.
The Metropolitan Police said they received the allegations “which relate to 40 surviving victims and cover offenses including sexual assault and rape” which took place between 1979 and 2013.
They are in addition to 21 women who came forward to police between 2005 and 2023 with allegations of sexual offenses against the businessman. He was never prosecuted and died last year at the age of 94.
Police have appealed to Al Fayed’s victims and anyone with information about the crimes to come forward. Commander Steven Clayman said detectives will review the information “to see if there are any criminal charges that can be pursued.”
Police and Harrods management are facing questions about why no action was taken against Al Fayed while he was alive. In 2008, he was questioned by detectives in connection with the alleged sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy, and in 2009 and 2015 police handed over evidence files on him to prosecutors. He was never charged.
Harrods’ current managing director, Michael Ward, said last month that the store “deeply regrets” the dismissal of staff. He said it was clear that al-Fayed “ran a toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation, fear of repercussions and sexual misconduct”.
Al Fayed’s family has not commented.
The Egyptian-born businessman moved to the UK in the 1960s and in the mid-1980s bought Harrods, an upscale department store in London’s Knightsbridge district. Al Fayed sold Harrods in 2010 to a state-owned company Qatar through its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
He became a household name due to his ownership of a shop and the London football team Fulham. He often made headlines after his son Dodi died along with Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
For years, al-Fayed promoted a conspiracy theory that the royal family orchestrated the accident because they did not approve of Diana dating an Egyptian.
The inquest concluded that Diana and Dodi died due to the reckless actions of their driver — an employee of the Ritz Hotel in Paris, owned by Al-Fayed — and the paparazzi who chased the couple. Separate investigations in Britain and France also concluded that there was no collusion.
