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Mohamed al-Fayed, original name Mohamed Fayed, (b. January 27, 1929, Alexandria, Egypt - d. August 30, 2023, London, England), was an Egyptian businessman who acquired a number of prestigious holdings throughout his career, including the Ritz Hotel in Paris and Harrods department store in London. He also was known for his clashes with the British establishment, which escalated after his son Dodi and Diana, Princess of Wales, were killed in a car crash in 1997.
Fayed was raised in Alexandria, Egypt. Although he later claimed to have been born in 1933, official documents give his birth year as 1929. In 1954, he wed (later divorced) Samira Khashoggi, the sister of Saudi Arabian businessman and international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who subsequently employed him at his import-export business. Fayed moved to Genoa, Italy, in 1958 and then to London in 1964. Two years later he became an adviser to the sultan of Brunei and founded his own shipping company, Genevaco. In 1972 he launched the marine repair yard International Marine Services in Dubai.
In 1974, Fayed moved to Britain, where he added the al- to his name and acquired vast holdings, including the Ritz Hotel in Paris (1979). Fayed’s contentious relationship with the British establishment was well documented. In a rancorous takeover in 1985, he beat out mining giant Lonrho to purchase the House of Fraser, the holding company that controlled Harrods department store. Spurred on by Lonrho owner Roland (“Tiny”) Rowland, the government accused Fayed of having misrepresented his ability to finance the takeover. Though Fayed proved his solvency, his wealth continued to be suspect in some quarters. In 1986 he signed a 50-year lease on the Parisian villa of the duke and duchess of Windsor, which he promptly restored. Following the formal reopening of the villa in 1989, he received the Plaque de Paris, the city’s highest honor.
Despite receiving some honors, Fayed’s relationship with the British establishment was further strained by his involvement in the “cash-for-questions” scandal that arose in 1994 after Fayed named ministers who had accepted money from him in return for tabling parliamentary questions on his behalf. After the disclosures were made, two junior ministers resigned and a new committee was established to monitor standards at Westminster. Fayed’s 1995 attempt to buy London News Radio and his 1996 bid to buy The Observer also attracted considerable publicity, as did his relaunch of the venerable humor magazine Punch (1996–2002).
Although frustrated in his efforts to be accepted as a British citizen—his application was first denied in 1995, and subsequent attempts were also unsuccessful—Fayed continued to play an influential and highly controversial role in Great Britain. Fayed had numerous feuds with the British establishment and helped wreck the careers of several Conservative politicians. British royalty also became entangled with Fayed, when on August 31, 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash alongside Fayed’s son Emad (“Dodi”) Mohamed al-Fayed, with whom she was romantically linked. On the evening of August 31, 1997, the couple had dined at the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in Paris. Two months later Fayed launched a private investigation into the crash and hired a former French police chief to head it. Although a French court later faulted the driver of Diana’s car, Fayed continued to assert that the British royal family had ordered her execution. A 2008 British inquest later cleared the royals and the secret service of any wrongdoing.
In 1997 Fayed acquired a controlling interest in the Fulham Football Club, of which he became chairman, and his name first appeared on The Sunday Times’s annual list of Britain’s wealthiest individuals. In 2006 Fayed launched the luxury convenience store Harrods 102. Four years later it was announced that Harrods had been sold to Qatar Holding. In 2013 Fayed also sold Fulham.
Mohamed al-Fayed died of natural causes on August 30, 2023, in London, England, at the age of 94. He was buried on 1 September 1, 2023, after Friday prayers at the London Central Mosque.
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Mohamed Al-Fayed (/ælfaɪˈɛd/; Egyptian Arabic: محمد الفايد [mæˈħæmmæd elˈfæːjed]; 27 January 1929 – 30 August 2023) was an Egyptian businessman whose residence and chief business interests were in the United Kingdom from the mid-1960s. His business interests included ownership of the Hôtel Ritz Paris, and Harrods department store and Fulham Football Club, both in London. At the time of his death in 2023, Fayed's wealth was estimated at US$2 billion, making him the 1,493rd richest person in the world.[1]
Fayed was married to Samira Khashoggi from 1953 to 1956, and had a son, Dodi. Dodi was in a romantic relationship with Diana, Princess of Wales, when they both died in a car crash in Paris in 1997. In 1985, Fayed married the Finnish socialite and former model Heini Wathén with whom he had four children: Jasmine, Karim, Camilla, and Omar.
Fayed was born in the Roshdy neighborhood of Alexandria, in the Kingdom of Egypt,[2] the eldest son of an Egyptian primary school teacher from Asyut. His year of birth has been disputed.[3] His website, alfayed.com,[4] used to claim he was born in 1933,[5] but the Department of Trade found his year of birth was 1929.[3] The website changed his birthyear from "1933" to "1929" in 2011.[5] His brothers Ali and Salah have been his business colleagues.[6]
Fayed was married from 1954 to 1956 to Samira Khashoggi. He worked with his wife's brother, Saudi Arabian arms dealer and businessman Adnan Khashoggi, uncle of the murdered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.[7]
Sometime in the early 1970s, he began using "Al-Fayed" rather than "Fayed". His brothers Ali and Salah followed suit at the time of their acquisition of the House of Fraser in the 1980s, though by the late 1980s, both had reverted to calling themselves simply "Fayed".[8] Some have assumed that Fayed's addition of "Al-" to his name was to imply aristocratic origins, like "de" in French or "von" in German, though Al- does not have the same social connotations in Arabic.[7] This assumption led to Private Eye magazine nicknaming him the "Phoney Pharaoh".[9]
Fayed and his brothers founded a shipping company in Egypt before moving its headquarters to Genoa, Italy, with offices in London.[citation needed]
Around 1964, Fayed entered a close relationship with Haitian leader François Duvalier, known as 'Papa Doc', and became interested in the construction of a Fayed-Duvalier oil refinery in Haiti. He also associated with the geologist George de Mohrenschildt. Fayed terminated his stay in Haiti six months later when a sample of "crude oil" provided by Haitian associates proved to be low-grade molasses.[10]
Fayed then moved to England, where he lived in central London.[11] In the mid-1960s, he met the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, who entrusted him with helping transform Dubai, where he set up IMS (International Marine Services) in 1968.[12] Fayed introduced British companies like the Costain Group (of which he became a director and 30% shareholder[7]), Bernard Sunley & Sons, and Taylor Woodrow to the emirate to carry out the required construction work.[13][11] He also became a financial adviser to the then Sultan of Brunei Omar Ali Saifuddien III in 1966.[7]
Fayed briefly joined the board of the mining conglomerate Lonrho in 1975 but left after a disagreement.[citation needed]
In 1979, he bought The Ritz hotel in Paris, France, for US$30 million.[14]
In 1984, Fayed and his brothers purchased a 30% stake in House of Fraser, a group that included the London store Harrods, from Roland 'Tiny' Rowland, the head of Lonrho. In 1985, he and his brothers bought the remaining 70% of House of Fraser for £615m. Rowland claimed that the Fayed brothers lied about their background and wealth and he put pressure on the government to investigate them. A Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) inquiry into the Fayeds was launched. The DTI's subsequent report was critical, but no action was taken against the Fayeds, and while many believed the contents of the report, others felt it was politically motivated.[15] Rowland described his relationship with the Fayed family in his book A Hero from Zero.[16] He started with the following words:
The rest of the book set out to justify these statements.[citation needed]
In 1998, Rowland accused Fayed of stealing papers and jewels from his Harrods safe deposit box. Fayed was arrested, but the charges were dropped.[17] Rowland died in 1998. Fayed settled the dispute with a payment to his widow; he also sued the Metropolitan Police for false arrest in 2002, but lost the case.[18]
In 1994, House of Fraser went public, but Fayed retained the private ownership of Harrods.[citation needed]
He re-launched the humorous magazine Punch in 1996 but it folded again in 2002.[citation needed]
Al-Fayed unsuccessfully applied for British citizenship twice, in 1994 and 1999.[19][20] It was suggested that his feud with Rowland contributed to the first refusal.[3]
In 1994, in what became known as the cash-for-questions affair, Fayed revealed the names of MPs he had paid to ask questions in Parliament on his behalf, but who had failed to declare their fees. It saw Conservative MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith leave the government in disgrace, and a Committee on Standards in Public Life established to prevent such corruption occurring again. Fayed also revealed that cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken stayed for free at the Ritz Hotel in Paris at the same time as a group of Saudi arms dealers, leading to Aitken's subsequent unsuccessful libel case and imprisonment for perjury.[21] During this period in 1988, Al-Fayed's spokesman was Michael Cole, a former BBC journalist,[22] although Cole's PR work for Al-Fayed did not cease in 1998.[clarification needed]
Hamilton lost a subsequent libel action against Al-Fayed in December 1999[23] and a subsequent appeal against the verdict in December 2000.[24] The former MP has always denied that he was paid by Al-Fayed for asking questions in Parliament. Hamilton's libel action related to a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary broadcast on 16 January 1997[25] in which Al-Fayed made claims that the MP had received up to £110,000 in cash and other gratuities for asking parliamentary questions.[26] Hamilton's basis for his appeal was that the original verdict was invalid because Al-Fayed had paid £10,000 for documents stolen from the dustbins of Hamilton's legal representatives by Benjamin Pell.[27]
In 2003, Fayed moved from Surrey, UK, to Switzerland, alleging a breach in an agreement with the British tax authority. In 2005, he moved back to Britain, saying that he "regards Britain as home".[3] He moored a yacht called the Sokar in Monaco prior to selling it in 2014.[28]
After denials that Harrods was for sale, it was sold to Qatar Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, on 10 May 2010. A fortnight previously, Fayed had stated that "People approach us from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar. Fair enough. But I put two fingers up to them. It is not for sale. This is not Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury's. It is a special place that gives people pleasure. There is only one Mecca."[29]
Harrods was sold for £1.5 billion. Fayed later revealed in an interview that he decided to sell Harrods following the difficulty in getting his dividend approved by the trustee of the Harrods pension fund. Fayed said "I'm here every day, I can't take my profit because I have to take a permission of those bloody idiots. I say is this right? Is this logic? Somebody like me? I run a business and I need to take bloody fucking trustee's permission to take my profit".[30] Fayed was appointed honorary chairman of Harrods, a position he was scheduled to hold for at least six months.[30]
In 1972, Fayed purchased the Balnagown estate in Easter Ross, Northern Scotland. From an initial 4.8 hectares (12 acres), Al-Fayed went on to build the estate up to 26,300 hectares (65,000 acres).[31] Al-Fayed invested more than £20 million in the estate, restored the 14th-century pink Balnagown Castle, and created a tourist accommodation business.[31] The Highlands of Scotland tourist board awarded Al-Fayed the Freedom of the Highlands in 2002, in recognition of his "outstanding contribution and commitment to the Highlands."[citation needed]
As an Egyptian with links to Scotland, Al-Fayed was intrigued enough to fund a 2008 reprint of the 15th-century chronicle Scotichronicon by Walter Bower. The Scotichronicon describes how Scota, a sister of the Egyptian Pharaoh, fled her family and landed in Scotland, bringing with her the Stone of Scone. According to the chronicle, Scotland was later named in her honour. The tale is disputed by modern historians.[32] Al-Fayed later declared that "The Scots are originally Egyptians and that's the truth."[33]
In 2009, Al-Fayed revealed that he was a supporter of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, announcing to the Scots that "It's time for you to waken up and detach yourselves from the English and their terrible politicians...whatever help is needed for Scotland to regain its independence, I will provide it...when you Scots regain your freedom, I am ready to be your president."[33]
Fayed set up the Al Fayed Charitable Foundation in 1987 aiming to help children with life-limiting conditions and children living in poverty. The charity works mainly with charities and hospices for disabled and neglected children in the UK, Thailand and Mongolia.[34]
Some of the charities with which it works include Francis House Hospice in Manchester, Great Ormond Street Hospital and ChildLine. In 1998, Al-Fayed bought Princess Diana's old boarding school in Kent and helped found the New School at West Heath for children with additional needs and mental health problems.[35]
In 2011, Mohamed Al-Fayed's daughter Camilla, who had worked as an ambassador for the charity for eight years,[36] opened the newly refurbished Zoe's Place baby hospice in West Derby, Liverpool.[37]
Al-Fayed bought west London professional football club Fulham F.C. for £6.25 million in 1997.[38] The purchase was made via Bill Muddyman's Muddyman Group.[38] His long-term aim was that Fulham would become a Premier League side within five years. In 2001, Fulham won the First Division (now Football League Championship) under manager Jean Tigana, winning 101 points and scoring 90 goals in the 2000/2001 season. This meant that Al-Fayed had achieved his Premier League aim a year ahead of schedule.[citation needed] By 2002, Fulham were competing in European football, winning the Intertoto Cup and challenging in the UEFA Cup. Fulham reached the final of the 2009–10 UEFA Europa League and continued to play in the Premier League throughout Al-Fayed's tenure as owner, which ended in 2013.[citation needed]
Fulham temporarily left Craven Cottage while it was being upgraded to meet modern safety standards. There were fears that the club would not return to the Cottage after it was revealed that Al-Fayed had sold the first right to build on the ground to a property development firm.[39]
Fulham lost a legal case against former manager Tigana in 2004 after Al-Fayed had wrongly alleged that Tigana had overpaid more than £7m for new players and had negotiated transfers in secret.[40] In 2009, Al-Fayed said that he was in favour of a wage cap for footballers, and criticised the management of The Football Association and Premier League as "run by donkeys who don't understand business, who are dazzled by money."[41]
A statue of the American entertainer Michael Jackson was unveiled by Al-Fayed in April 2011 at Craven Cottage. In 1999 Jackson had attended a league game against Wigan Athletic at the stadium. Following criticism of the statue, Al-Fayed said "If some stupid fans don't understand and appreciate such a gift this guy gave to the world they can go to hell. I don't want them to be fans."[42] The statue was taken down by the club's new owners in 2013; Al-Fayed blamed the club's subsequent relegation from the Premier League on the 'bad luck' brought by its removal. Al-Fayed then donated the statue to the National Football Museum.[43] In March 2019, the statue was removed from the museum due to the backlash against Jackson caused by the child-abuse accusations against him in the documentary Leaving Neverland.[44]
Under Al-Fayed Fulham F.C. was owned by Mafco Holdings, based in the tax haven of Bermuda and in turn owned by Al-Fayed and his family. By 2011, Al-Fayed had lent Fulham F.C. £187 million in interest free loans.[45] In July 2013, it was announced that Al-Fayed had sold the club to Pakistani American businessman Shahid Khan, who owns the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars.[46]
Lady Diana Spencer was born in 1961, and married the heir to the British throne, Charles, Prince of Wales (now King Charles III), in 1981, becoming Princess of Wales. Diana was an international celebrity and a frequent visitor to Harrods in the 1980s. Al-Fayed and Dodi first met Diana and Charles in July 1986 when they were introduced at a polo tournament sponsored by Harrods.[54]
Diana and Charles divorced in 1996, after what was mostly a tumultuous marriage. Diana was hosted by Al-Fayed in the south of France in mid-1997, with her sons, Princes William and Harry.[55] For the holiday, Fayed bought a 195 ft yacht, the Jonikal (later renamed the Sokar).[56] Dodi and Diana later began a private cruise on the Jonikal and paparazzi photographs of the couple in an embrace were published. Diana's friend, the journalist Richard Kay, confirmed that Diana was involved in "her first serious romance" since her divorce.[57]
Dodi and Diana went on a second private cruise on the Jonikal in the third week of August, and returned from Sardinia to Paris on 30 August. Later that day, the couple privately dined at the Ritz, after the behaviour of the press caused them to cancel a restaurant reservation. They planned to spend the night at Dodi's apartment near the Arc de Triomphe.[58] In an attempt to deceive the paparazzi, a decoy car left the front of the hotel, while Diana and Dodi departed from the rear of the hotel in a Mercedes-Benz S280 driven by concierge Henri Paul.[58] Five minutes later, the car crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel. Dodi and Paul were found dead at this location. Diana died afterwards in hospital. British bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, who sustained a serious head injury, was the sole survivor of the crash, though conscious after the car crashed. Fayed arrived in Paris a day later and viewed Dodi's body, which was finally returned to the United Kingdom for an Islamic funeral.[58][59]
From February 1998, Al-Fayed maintained that the crash was a result of a conspiracy,[60] and later contended that the crash was orchestrated by MI6 on the instructions of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.[61] His claims were dismissed by a French judicial investigation, but Fayed appealed the verdict. A libel action was brought against Al-Fayed by Neil Hamilton (see above).[citation needed]
The British Operation Paget, a Metropolitan police inquiry that concluded in 2006, also found no evidence of a conspiracy.[62] To Operation Paget, Al-Fayed made 175 "conspiracy claims".[63]
An inquest headed by Lord Justice Scott Baker into the deaths of Diana and Dodi began at the Royal Courts of Justice, London, on 2 October 2007 and lasted for six months. It was a continuation of the original inquest that had begun in 2004.[64]
At the Scott Baker inquest, Fayed accused the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, her sister, and numerous others, of plotting to kill the Princess of Wales.[65] Their motive, he claimed, was that they could not tolerate the idea of the Princess marrying a Muslim.[66]
Al-Fayed first claimed that the Princess was pregnant to the Daily Express in May 2001,[66] and that he was the only person who had been told. Witnesses at the inquest who said the Princess was not pregnant, and could not have been, were part of the conspiracy according to Al-Fayed.[67] Fayed's testimony at the inquest was roundly condemned in the press as farcical. Members of the British Government's Intelligence and Security Committee accused Fayed of turning the inquest into a 'circus' and called for it to be ended prematurely.[68] Lawyers representing Al-Fayed later accepted at the inquest that there was no direct evidence that neither the Duke of Edinburgh nor MI6 was involved in any murder conspiracy involving Diana or Dodi.[69] A few days before Al-Fayed's appearance, John Macnamara, a former senior detective at Scotland Yard and Al-Fayed's investigator for five years from 1997, was forced to admit on 14 February 2008 that he had no evidence to suggest foul play, except for the assertions Al-Fayed had made to him.[70] His admissions also related to the lack of evidence for Al-Fayed's claims of the Princess's pregnancy and the couple's engagement.[70]
The jury verdict, given on 7 April 2008, was that Diana and Dodi were "unlawfully killed" through the grossly negligent driving of Henri Paul,[71] who was intoxicated, and the pursuing vehicles.[72]
Al-Fayed's lawyers also accepted that there was no evidence to support the assertion that Diana was illegally embalmed to conceal pregnancy, or that a pregnancy could be confirmed by any medical evidence.[69] They also accepted that there was no evidence to support the assertion that the French emergency and medical services had played any role in a conspiracy to harm Diana.[69] Following the Baker inquest, Al-Fayed said that he was abandoning his conspiracy campaign, and would accept the jury's verdict.[73]
Journalist Dominic Lawson wrote in The Independent in 2008 that Al-Fayed sought to concoct "a conspiracy to cover up the true circumstances" of fatalities caused by the crash "involving an intoxicated and over-excited driver (an employee of Mohamed Fayed's Paris Ritz)". He "had remarkable success in persuading elements of the tabloid press, notably the Daily Express, to give the conspiracy a fair wind."[74]
Al-Fayed financially supported Unlawful Killing (2011), a documentary film presenting his version of events.[75] It was not formally released because of the potential for libel suits.[76]
Al-Fayed has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and assault.[77][78]
Young women applying for employment at Harrods were often submitted to HIV tests and gynaecological examinations.[79] They were then selected to spend the weekend with Al-Fayed in Paris.[79] In her profile of Al-Fayed for Vanity Fair, Maureen Orth described how, according to former employees, "Fayed regularly walked the store on the lookout for young, attractive women to work in his office. Those who rebuffed him would often be subjected to crude, humiliating comments about their appearance or dress... A dozen ex-employees I spoke with said that Fayed would chase secretaries around the office and sometimes try to stuff money down women's blouses".[80]
In December 1997, the ITV current affairs programme The Big Story broadcast testimonies from a number of former Harrods employees who spoke of how Al-Fayed routinely sexually harassed women in similar ways.[78]
Al-Fayed was interviewed under caution by the Metropolitan Police after an allegation of sexual assault against a 15-year-old schoolgirl in October 2008. The case was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service when they found there was no realistic chance of conviction due to conflicting statements.[81]
A December 2017 episode of Channel 4's Dispatches programme alleged that Al-Fayed sexually harassed three female Harrods employees, and attempted to "groom" them. One of the women was aged 17 at the time. Cheska Hill-Wood waived her right to anonymity to be interviewed for the programme.[82] The programme alleged Al-Fayed targeted young employees over a 13-year period.[83]
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Mohamed al-Fayed, Tycoon Whose Son Died With Diana, Is Dead at 94
An Egyptian businessman, he built an empire of trophy properties in London, Paris and elsewhere, but it was all overshadowed by a fatal car crash that stunned the world.
Mohamed al-Fayed, the Egyptian business tycoon whose empire of trophy properties and influence in Europe and the Middle East was overshadowed by the 1997 Paris car crash that killed his eldest son, Dodi, and Diana, the Princess of Wales, died on Wednesday. He was 94.
His death was confirmed on Friday in a statement by the Fulham Football Club in Britain, of which Mr. Fayed was a former owner. It did not say where he died.
The patriarch of a family that rose from humble origins to fabled riches, Mr. Fayed controlled far-flung enterprises in oil, shipping, banking and real estate, including the palatial Ritz Hotel in Paris and, for 25 years, the storied London retail emporium Harrods. Forbes estimated his net worth at $2 billion this year, ranking his wealth as 1,516th in the world.
In a sense, Mr. Fayed was a citizen of the world. He had homes in London, Paris, New York, Geneva, St. Tropez and other locales; a fleet of 40 ships based in Genoa, Italy, and in Cairo; and businesses that reached from the Persian Gulf to North Africa, Europe and the Americas. He held Egyptian citizenship but rarely if ever returned to his native land.
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Mr. Fayed lived and worked mostly in Britain, where for a half-century he was a quintessential outsider, scorned by the establishment in a society still embedded with old-boy networks. He clashed repeatedly with the government and business rivals over his property acquisitions and attempts to influence members of Parliament. He campaigned noisily for British citizenship, but his applications were repeatedly denied.
“It’s the colonial, imperial fantasy,” Mr. Fayed told The New York Times in 1995. “Anyone who comes from a colony, as Egypt was before, they think he’s nothing. So you prove you’re better than they are. You do things that are the talk of the town. And they think, ‘How can he? He’s only an Egyptian.’”
He reveled in the trappings of a British aristocrat. He bought a castle in Scotland and sometimes wore a kilt; snapped up a popular British football club; cultivated Conservative prime ministers and members of Parliament; sponsored the Royal Horse Show at Windsor; and tried unsuccessfully to salvage Punch, the moribund satirical magazine that had lampooned the British establishment for 150 years.
His takeover of the venerable Harrods in 1985 struck many Britons as shameless brass, something akin to buying Big Ben. A year later, as if securing a jewel in the crown of British heritage, Mr. Fayed signed a 50-year lease on the 19th-century villa in Paris that had been the home of the former King Edward VIII of Britain and Wallis Warfield Simpson, the divorced American woman for whom he abdicated his throne in 1936.
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But Mr. Fayed’s triumph as an Anglophile was the made-for-tabloids romance between his eldest son, Emad, known as Dodi, and the Princess of Wales, who had recently been divorced from Prince Charles (now King Charles III) and alienated from the royal family. It began in the summer of 1997, when Mr. Fayed invited Diana and her sons to spend some time at his home on the French Riviera and on one of his yachts. Dodi was there too.
The Egyptian-born nephew of the Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, Dodi was a notorious playboy who gave lavish parties, financed films, dated beautiful women and was once briefly married. He and Diana had been acquainted, but by many accounts they fell in love on the Mediterranean sojourn. As their romance bloomed, the British press pounced. Paparazzi hounded the couple everywhere they went.
In the early hours of Aug. 31, 1997, a Mercedes-Benz carrying Diana and Dodi and driven by Henri Paul, a Fayed security agent who was drunk and traveling at a high speed trying to elude carloads of pursuing paparazzi, slammed head-on into a concrete pillar in a tunnel in Paris. All three were killed.
Controversy exploded over the cause of the crash and the implications of the affair. Some tabloids suggested that an immigrant had been an unfit suitor for a princess. But friends said that the couple had planned to marry, and that the Fayed family had offered Diana and her sons a warmth that contrasted with the way Britain’s royal family had shunned her after the divorce.
As rumors and conspiracy theories swirled, Mr. Fayed declared that the two had been murdered by “people who did not want Diana and Dodi to be together.” He said they had been engaged to marry and maintained that they had called him an hour before the crash to tell him that she was pregnant. Buckingham Palace and the princess’s family denounced his remarks as malicious fantasy.
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The deaths inspired waves of books, articles and investigations of conspiracy theories, as well as a period of soul-searching among Britons, who resented the royal family’s standoffish behavior and were caught up in displays of mass grief. In 2006, the British police ruled the crash an accident.
And in 2008, a British coroner’s jury rejected all conspiracy theories involving the royal family, British intelligence services and others. It attributed the deaths to “gross negligence” by the driver and the pursuing paparazzi. It also said a French pathologist had found that Diana was not pregnant.
Mr. Fayed called the verdict biased, but he and his lawyers did not pursue the matter further. “I’ve had enough,” he told Britain’s ITV News. “I’m leaving this to God to get my revenge.”
Mohamed al-Fayed was born Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed in Alexandria, Egypt, on Jan. 27, 1929, one of five children of a primary-school teacher, Aly Aly Fayed. Details about his early life are murky.
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His accounts of growing up in a prosperous merchant family were discounted by British investigators. He sold sewing machines and joined his two younger brothers, Ali and Salah, in a shipping business. In the early 1950s, Adnan Khashoggi set the brothers up in a venture that exported Egyptian furniture to Saudi Arabia. It flourished.
In 1954, Mr. Fayed married Mr. Khashoggi’s sister, Samira. Dodi was their only child. They were divorced in 1956. In 1985, he married Heini Wathén, a Finn. They had four children, all born in Britain: Jasmine, Karim, Camilla and Omar.
Information on survivors was not immediately available.
The Fayed shipping interests profited handsomely from an oil boom in the Persian Gulf in the 1960s. Acting as middlemen for British construction companies and gulf rulers, they helped develop the port of Dubai, the Dubai Trade Center and other properties in what is now the United Arab Emirates.
Mr. Fayed, who made all his family’s major investment and financial decisions, moved to London in the mid-1960s. He added “al-” to his surname, implying aristocratic origins. After buying the Scottish castle, he expanded its estate to 65,000 acres; after acquiring the Fulham Football Club, he built it into a top team in a nation infatuated with the sport. (He sold the team in 2013 to a Pakistani American businessman.) A heavy contributor to the Conservative Party, he nurtured relationships with members of Parliament and Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
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In 1979, the Fayed brothers bought the fading Ritz Hotel in Paris for under $30 million and, with a 10-year, $250 million renovation, turned it into one of the world’s most luxurious hotels. Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed dined in the Imperial Suite before their fatal crash.
In 1984-85, in their greatest commercial coup in Britain, the Fayeds paid $840 million for the House of Fraser, the parent company of Harrods and scores of other stores, and invested $300 million more to refurbish the chain’s flagship, in London’s exclusive Knightsbridge section.
Prodded by a business rival, the government investigated the Harrods deal and in 1990 concluded that the Fayed brothers had “dishonestly misrepresented” themselves as descendants of an old landowning and shipbuilding family. The government report said the money for Harrods had probably come from the Sultan of Brunei. The sultan denied it, and Mr. Fayed, who was not accused of wrongdoing, called the report a smear.
In investigative reports by the press and the police, Mr. Fayed was accused by many women of unwanted sexual advances, job-related sexual harassment of female employees at Harrods, and even sexual assault involving teenage girls. He denied the allegations and, although he was questioned by the authorities in Britain, he was never prosecuted on such charges.
Mr. Fayed was bitter about being stymied in his quest for British citizenship, although all his children by his second wife held that status. As he noted, he had lived in Britain for decades, paid millions in taxes, employed thousands of people and, through his enterprises, contributed mightily to the economy.
“They could not accept that an Egyptian could own Harrods, so they threw mud at me,” he told reporters. He sold Harrods in 2010 to Qatar Holding, the sovereign wealth fund of the Emirate of Qatar, for more than $2 billion, and announced his retirement.
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