When Mohamed Fayed was born in 1929 in a poor neighborhood of the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a career as a wealthy businessman and troublemaker for the British elite was not obvious. A century later, that is how the flamboyant Al-Fayed – now with the prefix ‘al’ in the surname – will go down in the history books. Last Wednesday he died at the age of 94, the football club Fulham made known Friday. Al-Fayed owned the club from London between 1997 and 2013.
Besides owning the Ritz Hotel in Paris and the British luxury department store Harrods, he will be remembered primarily as the father of Princess Diana’s love partner Dodi. Film producer Dodi and Diana were killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997, pursued by paparazzi. All his life, Mohamed al-Fayed would maintain that Dodi and Diana were deliberately killed by what he called “the establishment”, because the British royal family would have been against their relationship.
Lemonade and sewing machines
The story of the businessman Al-Fayed started on the streets of Egypt, first selling lemonade and later sewing machines. But his most important step towards fame and money was mainly due to his first marriage to Samira Khashoggi in 1954. Her brother was millionaire and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Samira’s marriage lasted only two years, but his brother-in-law introduced him to business associates in the Gulf States and London during that time.
Not long after, Al-Fayed set up his own transport company in Egypt and did business with the greats, from Arab sheikhs to Haitian dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. With his money, Al-Fayed tried to woo the British royal family. , including through the sponsorship of the Royal Windsor Horse Show.
Harrods purchase
Al-Fayed spent his life trying to connect with the British elite, but Al-Fayed always remained an outsider in the highest British circles. This position was underlined by the fact that he was refused a British passport on two occasions. Al-Fayed saw the rejections as an affront and suspected that the purchase of the Harrods department store had to do with the opposition. He knows the rejection in the late 1990s to the “invisible force” behind the British government.
Al-Fayed had trumped the multinational Lonrho in 1985 when buying Harrods. Investigations by the British government later showed that the deal had been made with money from the Sultan of Brunei – something that Al-Fayed had concealed during the takeover. The British government’s investigation showed that Al-Fayed had not played a card openly or even lied outright about more things when buying Harrods. The so-called British background of Al-Fayed and his brothers and business partners Ali and Salah turned out to be fabricated and he had exaggerated his wealth.
Tiny Rowland, owner of the Lonrho group, couldn’t stomach the fact that he had missed the department store and spent a fortune investigating Al-Fayed, including through private investigators. Rowland also owned the weekend newspaper The Observerwhich he released on Thursday for once, purely to blacken Al-Fayed. The Phoney Pharaoh, headlined the newspaper: the false pharaoh. Al-Fayed himself attributes the attacks to the fact that the British could not stand the fact that their iconic department store had fallen into Egyptian hands.
Unsold documentary
His son Dodi’s relationship with Diana seemed to open the desired door to the British elite for Mohamed Al-Fayed. With the deaths of Dodi and Diana, that door was finally closed to Al-Fayed, especially since he did not stop his public accusations that Prince Philip and MI6 were behind the accident. He wanted to share his theory with a wider audience and financed a documentary, Unlawful Killingbut it hit not internationally. Potential customers feared being sued for defamation.
In the years following the deaths of Dodi and Diana, Harrods lost its status as purveyor to the British royal family. Prince Philip had viciously let it slip that he hadn’t bought his suits from Harrods for a long time. Al-Fayed sold the department store in 2010 for 1.5 billion pounds (converted 1.7 billion euros) to the investment fund of the royal family of Qatar.
Al-Fayed actually wanted to have himself mummified as a pharaoh in Harrods “so that my customers can always see me”, but the Qatari takeover prevented that from happening. Last week he was buried privately in the family mausoleum in the town of Oxted, outside London. He lies next to his son Dodi, whose death he could never come to terms with. Mohamed al-Fayed is survived by his wife Heini Wathén and four children.