Mohamed Al-Fayed
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Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed (Arabic: محمد الفايد ) (b. January 27, c.1929) is an Egyptian-born, Swiss-based businessman. He styles himself Mohamed al-Fayed, the al being Arabic designation, which some of his critics contest he is not entitled to.
Mohamed al-Fayed is the owner of Harrod's department store in Knightsbridge, London, the English Premiership football team Fulham Football Club and other business interests. He re-launched Punch in 1996, only to see it fold again in 2002. He is married to Heini Wathén from Finland.
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History
Born in Bakos (باكوس), a poor neighbourhood in eastern Alexandria, Egypt, the eldest son of a poor primary school teacher, he took up a number of jobs, from selling Coca-Cola on the streets of his home city to working as a sewing machine salesman, and as a teacher.
He made his money when he married the sister of the international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who employed him in his import business in Saudi Arabia. After growing his circles of influence in UAE, Haiti, and London, Fayed established his own shipping company in Egypt, before becoming a financial adviser to one of the world's richest men, the Sultan of Brunei, in 1966.
He arrived in Britain in 1974, adding the honorific al- to his name (earning the Private Eye nickname "the Phoney Pharaoh") and briefly joining the board of the mining conglomerate Lonrho in 1975. During the 1970s he married Finnish Heini Wathén.
In 1979 al-Fayed bought the Hôtel Ritz Paris and in 1985 he and his brother Ali bought Harrods for £615m. The Harrods deal was made under the nose of Roland 'Tiny' Rowland, the head of Lonrho. Rowland had been seeking to buy Harrods and took the Al-Fayeds to a Department of Trade inquiry. The inquiry, focusing on one of the most bitter feuds in British business history, reported in 1990 and stated that the brothers had lied about their background and wealth. The bickering with Rowland continued when he accused them of stealing millions in jewels from his Harrods safe deposit box. Rowland died and al-Fayed settled the dispute with a payment to his widow. Al-Fayed had been arrested during the dispute and sued the Metropolitan Police for false arrest in 2002. He lost the case.
For years he has sought British citizenship unsuccessfully. Both Labour and Conservative Home Secretaries have repeatedly rejected his claims on the grounds that he was not of good character. Consequently, he (unsuccessfully) took the matter to court. He has given millions to charities such as Great Ormond Street Hospital.
He was involved in the cash for questions scandal, having offered the Conservative MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith money for asking questions in Parliament in what some observers also saw as a sting to incriminate ministers in a government which had deemed him to be unsavoury. He provided MP Jonathan Aitken's bill from the Ritz Hotel in Paris to Peter Preston at The Guardian, thus destroying Aitken's libel case against the newspaper and resulting in a perjury conviction for Aitken.
Al-Fayed's son, the late film producer Dodi was dating Diana, Princess of Wales and was killed in the same car crash in Paris in 1997. He has since made repeated allegations that the deaths were not accidental, but rather the result of a wide-ranging conspiracy involving Prince Philip, MI5 and others. This campaign has led to Harrods losing all of its Royal Warrants. Al-Fayed has suggested that a cabal of British royalty and security officials could not stomach the possibility that Diana might bear a child to Dodi. Al-Fayed has also claimed that he is the victim of a long-running smear campaign to link him to the terrorist group al-Qaeda.
In 1998 he helped found The New School at West Heath as a tribute to the late Princess Diana, contributing almost £3 million GBP. It is part of the Al-Fayed Charitable Foundation.
In 2003, Al-Fayed moved from Surrey, UK to Switzerland, alleging the breach of an agreement with Her Majesty's Inland Revenue Commissioners. In January 2005, a Geneva newspaper said Al-Fayed had moved again, to Monaco, to take advantage of a more favourable tax climate. Al-Fayed is now thought to carry a UAE passport, and has given up any claim upon British citizenship.
Al-Fayed has four Finnish-British children from his second wife, Heini Wathén, who´s a Finn and former beauty queen. Two of his daughters are Jasmine and Camilla Al-Fayed. He has an estimated fortune of between $880 million and $3.3 billion.
He continues to support many charities through the Al-Fayed Charitable Foundation, including The New School at West Heath, however he is often criticised for not helping NGOs and charities in his original homeland, Egypt.
Organisations owned or involved in
Books and television
- Fayed: The Unauthorized Biography by Tom Bower portrays Al-Fayed as a compulsive liar and fantasist.
- "Mahmoud El-Masry", a fictionalized TV series based on Mohamed Al-Fayed's life, aired November 2004 simultaneously across Arabic-language satellite TV stations during the Ramadan month prime-time.
- A 2005 television documentary made by Keith Allen included an extensive interview about Al-Fayed's views on the British Royal Family, Princess Diana, Harrods, and his lifestyle.