LONDON — Mohamed al-Fayed, the late owner of Harrods department store, engaged over many years in what appeared to be widespread trafficking of dozens of women with whom he had sex, investigators told British lawmakers.
Many of the victims, including young sales assistants from the Harrods shop floor, were transported to Fayed’s home and offices, at times by helicopter, where they were abused by the billionaire owner, according to a recent briefing by London’s Metropolitan Police, the Guardian reported Friday.
Other victims were taken to meet Fayed overseas, the report said.
“The scale of potential trafficking in the Al Fayed case is deeply shocking,” Eleanor Lyons, Britain’s antislavery commissioner, said Friday in a statement to The Washington Post. “Trafficking does not have to mean crossing borders; it can happen within a city or even within a single building. In this case some of the potential trafficking took place solely within Harrods itself.”
Fayed, a self-made billionaire who immigrated from Egypt and delighted in the trappings of the English upper classes, died in 2023. Fayed’s son Dodi dated Princess Diana and died with her in a car crash in 1997.
Harrods, which Fayed owned from 1985 to 2010, did not comment on the new allegations and referred The Post to a previous statement condemning Fayed and saying that “as a business we failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologise.”
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