This is the first of a two-part article on the individuals and institutions in the UK that failed survivors of trafficking and abuse linked to Al Fayed time and again.
When, last February, the Prime Minister declared that “in this country we will not look away, we will not shrug our shoulders”, he was speaking about justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Survivors of trafficking and exploitation linked to Mohamed Al Fayed’s Harrods empire are waiting to be acknowledged.
More than 500 women and girls were herded into a trafficking system under the cover of legitimate employment. They faced grooming, surveillance, coercion and abuse by a fraternity of perpetrators (though Ali Fayed denies any wrongdoing) linked to wider networks of abuse. The system they describe depended on a workforce to run it, protect it, and conceal it.
That system could not have escaped the attention of executives across multiple linked businesses. And, as the evidence increasingly suggests, it also depended upon a mute state and enabling institutions. Though Al Fayed is dead, many of his associates and enablers survive him. Disgraced institutions remain. There has been no reckoning.
Al Fayed’s expansive criminality was well known. The question is why successive governments stayed their hand when evidence of his disregard for Britain’s laws emerged again and again. A man implicated in the deception and corruption of politicians; the obstruction of criminal justice; the negligent death of a princess; the smearing of the Royal Family; and the systematic rape of young women and girls – faced the relatively gentle rebuke of denied citizenship while enjoying such extraordinarily favourable tax arrangements that he removed far more money from Britain than he ever brought into it.
We let Mohamed Al Fayed get away with it.
Why?
The disgraceful history of what was known about Mohamed Al Fayed – and by whom – has been assiduously documented by our courts, journalists, biographers, police officers, and in the heartbreaking testimony of victims. It is not hidden, but has remained unseen.
No One Above, a survivor collective, has prepared this synopsis of what lies in plain sight.
An unscrutinised acquisition
The Fayed Brothers acquired Harrods in 1985 under murky circumstances. Just before the deal, Al Fayed accompanied the Sultan of Brunei to Downing Street to meet Margaret Thatcher. The pound was under pressure; the Sultan had moved billions out of sterling. Al Fayed claimed that he persuaded the Sultan to return it, averting a currency collapse.
Weeks later, Thatcher’s government waved through the brothers’ £615m acquisition of the entity controlling Harrods despite scant evidence of their assets (their claimed wealth was later shown to be a fabrication).
The following year, none other than the governor of the Bank of England defended the Fayeds’ good character to the Trade and Industry Committee, which had rightfully objected to their control of Harrods bank. Crowning the Fayeds’ warm reception in Britain was a generous forward tax agreement with HMRC, accepting modest fixed annual payments in place of proper assessment.
The Fayeds’ tax contributions under this arrangement, which was renewed at least twice, were so modest that a judge later ruled the agreement unlawful.
Impunity and revenge
In 1986, reports of serious sexual misconduct reached Margaret Thatcher, the late Queen and the Reagans. The teenage daughter of the United States ambassador to London reported that she had been trafficked, imprisoned and assaulted by Al Fayed before being returned to Heathrow, where she was received by British police and American diplomatic security. If Al Fayed faced any consequence for assaulting the child of a senior diplomat, it had no effect.
By 1988, a DTI report into the circumstances of the brothers’ acquisition of Harrods concluded that their “lies were the truth and the truth was a lie”. The publication of the report was postponed nearly two years, and no action was taken. However, the DTI report and denial of the brothers’ first British citizenship application in 1993 cooled the Fayeds’ previously warm relationship with the Tories. Devastating revenge followed.
In late 1994 and early 1995, Al Fayed publicised allegations that became central to New Labour’s “Tory sleaze” campaign and landslide victory in the 1997 general election. The Guardian published allegations that Tory MPs had accepted cash from Al Fayed in exchange for tabling parliamentary questions. The Guardian also published sleaze allegations against Junior minister Jonathan Aitken, who was later imprisoned for perjury on the strength of evidence from Al Fayed.
The incoming Blair government received accumulated intelligence on the Fayeds. In 1997, as Diana began a relationship with Dodi Fayed, the Sunday Mirror reported that the Royal Family was presented with an MI6 dossier drawing on British, American, French, Israeli and Egyptian intelligence, as well as Special Branch records.
MI6 itself had maintained files on Al Fayed since the 1980s. Special Branch had apprehended a terrified victim of Salah Fayed at Heathrow in 1993 following the suppression, involving current and former police officers, of a Scottish police investigation into drugs found among the possessions of Salah Fayed. The MI6 dossier must have been substantial.
Dai Davies, head of the Royal Protection Command, warned courtiers that a serious organised crime investigation involving Al Fayed was underway – and that he was aware of allegations of sexual misconduct. Davies also expressed his concerns to Police Commissioner Lord Condon.
It strains credulity that sustained, multi-agency awareness of criminal allegations involving a family in direct contact with both government and the Royal Household had no bearing on policing or intelligence strategy.
Public knowledge, private inaction
In 1995, Vanity Fair published the first major exposé detailing allegations of sexual misconduct, racial discrimination and coercive practices against staff – allegations that had circulated since at least the 1980s, when former staff told journalists that schoolgirls were delivered to Al Fayed weekly. The brothers sued Vanity Fair. The case was settled on terms that sealed all evidence prepared for trial.
Also in 1995, 17-year-old Samantha Jane Ramsay reported to the Metropolitan Police that she had been sexually assaulted by Al Fayed. She was told she was “not the first” and that officers already had “files inches high”. When the case resurfaced in 2024, officers said there was “no history” of allegations prior to the digitisation of police records in 1996.
However, those records would have been directly relevant to a 1997 inquiry into a serving officer linked to the false arrest of a victim alleging sexual assault by Al Fayed. That same year women spoke publicly on ITV’s The Big Story, describing systemic abuse by Al Fayed. Extensive coverage of further serious sexual misconduct allegations followed in 1998.
There are no circumstances under which “files inches high” could have been lawfully destroyed, with tragic consequences for hundreds of victims who followed.
Part Two of this article, to be published next week, covers the individuals and institutions who had some knowledge of the abuse that was occurring, and chose to look away.
The authors are survivors of the trafficking and abuse linked to Mohamed Al Fayed and Harrods, writing through No One Above (NOA) – a collective calling for full accountability: criminal, civil, and institutional.
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