He is a figure “à la Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, wrote the BBC in 1999. Mohamed Al-Fayed is, in fact, no exception.
Sometimes “jovial”, sometimes “diabolical” according to the article, the father of Dodi Al-Fayed is at the heart of episode 3 of
The Crown
, season 5, available November 9 on Netflix.
We see in particular the Egyptian billionaire with a nebulous history, embodied by the Israeli actor Salim Daw, warns his son against the British.
"I have the greatest contempt for the Egyptians who see them as gods," he says in the footage.
it should be remembered that Egypt maintained, for a long time, complex relations with Great Britain, of which it was one of the protectorates.
This will not prevent the businessman from applying for English citizenship twice.
Nor even to acquire the emblematic Harrods stores, the London football club Fulham, and the Windsor villa, residence of the former British sovereign Edward VIII, near Paris.
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Edward VIII's valet
Full screen
Rare shot of the Windsor villa, in which Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson lived.
(Paris, April 1, 1986.) AFP Forum
A decision that will see the destinies of the tycoon and Sydney Johnson, the property's former butler, intertwine.
This unexpected friendship is indeed mentioned in
The Crown.
We see the billionaire, who signed a 50-year lease in 1986 to rent this majestic 14-room house, located near the Bois de Boulogne, hire Johnson - who became a waiter at the Ritz - to help him restore the house.
The billionaire sets one condition: the butler must teach him all the secrets of the late Edward VIII.
Did Mohamed Al-Fayed really make this request?
Nobody knows.
But the businessman has indeed taken a liking to Sydney Johnson.
“Sidney is a veritable dictionary, he enthused in the columns of the
New York Times
, in 1986. He is a very cultured man.
He pulled all these things out of boxes, safes and warehouses, and he knows their history.”
When Sydney Johnson passed away in 1990, Mohamed Al-Fayed paid tribute to this "gentleman", who, he said, he "will miss very much".
A complicity that reflects the temperament of the billionaire, alternately impetuous, hard or benevolent.
"Gold Medal of Lying"
The sincerity of the businessman, upset by this disappearance as he will be, later, by that of Lady Diana, contrasts indeed with the portrait drawn up by the BBC in 1999. That of an elusive man, who sometimes settles with the truth.
“Mohamed Al-Fayed was a gold medalist for lying,” the article reads.
Fascinated by the British monarchy, which he nevertheless did not hesitate to shout down, the billionaire has built his legend on multiple paradoxes.
And did not fail to maintain the mystery around its history.
Starting with his date of birth.
If the businessman claims to have been born in 1933 in Alexandria, an investigation by the Ministry of Commerce established that he was born on January 27, 1929. The investigation, carried out as part of a legal battle for control of Harrods stores , also shed light on his childhood.
Mohammed Al-Fayed has long maintained that he comes from a wealthy family of cotton farmers.
He claimed, moreover, to have been brought up by an English nurse.
However, he would actually be the eldest son of a penniless professor.
Younger, Mohamed Fayed (his birth name) would have even accumulated small jobs.
He would have sold soda in the streets, as well as sewing machines.
The Al-Fayed Empire
Five decades later, the former street vendor runs an empire.
His companies employ thousands of people across England.
To amass such a fortune, the businessman armed himself with patience.
In 1954, he began by marrying Samira, the sister of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi.
The latter employs him in his import-export business.
A year later, Samira and Mohamed gave birth to Emad Fayed, nicknamed "Dodi", then divorced in 1956. During the following decade, Mohamed Fayed continued his ascent.
He became an adviser to the Sultan of Brunei and created his own shipping company, Genevaco.
At the end of the 1970s, he took up residence in the United Kingdom, and added a particle to his name: he would henceforth be known as Mohamed Al-Fayed.
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actors on set
A fierce competition
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Mohamed Al-Fayed and Heini Wathen admire the work of restoring the Vendôme column.
(Paris, June 27, 2016.) Getty Images
Wealthy, the businessman refuses nothing.
Not even the Ritz, which he acquired in 1979 for 615 million pounds (617 million euros).
In 1985, he married the Finnish model Heini Wathen, with whom he gave birth to four children (Jasmine, Karim, Omar and … Camilla).
The same year, he campaigned for House of Fraser, the group that owns Harrods stores.
All this at the cost of fierce competition with the Briton Tiny Rowland, boss of the Lonrho mining group.
Furious at his failure, the latter accuses his competitor of having lied about his fortune.
This is confirmed by the investigation of the Ministry of Commerce, inclined to point out the gray areas in the career of the billionaire.
Quarrels that will cost Mohamed Al-Fayed British citizenship, which he applied for twice.
Despite his four children, all British, and the fact that he pays substantial taxes in the United Kingdom, this one is always refused to him, because of his controversial aura.
"Garbage"
Full screen
Mohamed Al-Fayed, sponsor of the Royal Windsor Horse Show, poses with Queen Elizabeth II.
(May 18, 1997.) Getty Images
In 1994, it was too much for Mohamed Al-Fayed, tired of being held in high esteem by the
establishment
: he denounced two conservative ministers, Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith, whom he had bribed to ask questions - in his interest - in the House of Commons.
“I did it for revenge, to show people what quality really are those who run this country, he argues in
Vanity Fair,
the following year.
These days it's just garbage."
The businessman nevertheless remains at the head of Harrods, revives a satirical magazine,
Punch,
and straightens out the football club of Fulham, in London, which finds, under his direction, the way to the Premier League.
Assets which he will use, against all odds, to get closer to the Windsors.
Known for his “excesses” as much as for his generosity, Mohamed Al-Fayed became a patron of many royal charities.
He thus officiates as a sponsor of the Royal Windsor Horse Show, an equestrian show where he crosses paths with Her Majesty on several occasions.
But also that of a certain Lady Diana.
Lady Di's friend
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Mohamed Al-Fayed and Lady Diana arrive together at a charity gala.
(London, February 1996.) Getty Images
United by fate, these two
outsiders
become inseparable.
“Diana is so easy to live with Mohamed (…) They get along very well”, confides Michael Cole, then director of public affairs at Harrods, to
Vanity Fair,
in 1995. To the point that Mohamed Al-Fayed invites the princess on her yacht, the Jonikal, in the summer of 1997, a year after she officially divorced the future King Charles III.
It was there that she would have met Dodi Al-Fayed, son of the billionaire and producer of
Chariots of Fire
(1981).
But on August 31, as they leave the Ritz, Lady Diana and her companion perish in a chase with the paparazzi.
For the billionaire, there is no doubt: the Windsors ordered the murder of the couple.
According to the businessman, the royal family would not have supported the romance between Dodi and the princess.
Mohamed Al-Fayed also assures that Lady Diana was pregnant with Dodi, and was about to announce their engagement.
A rumor that has since been denied.
At the beginning of September 1997, the businessman appears overwhelmed, during the funeral of the princess.
“This family will destroy you!”
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After the death of Lady Diana, Mohamed Al-Fayed affirms that the royal family ordered the assassination of the latter.
(Edinburgh, December 15, 2003.) AFP Forum
In 2008, an investigation innocent the Windsors.
Mohamed Al-Fayed, he does not budge.
Martine Monteil, head of the crime squad at the time, remembers in episode 2 of the documentary series
Investigating Diana: Death in Pari
s, broadcast at the end of August on Channel 4, that the latter, plagued by grief, “saw evil everywhere” and conducted a “counter-investigation”.
"I only had respect for his pain," she says.
Not for its excesses.
The businessman will keep, meanwhile, a stubborn resentment against the royal family.
To the point of slipping this advice to Kate Middleton, about to marry Prince William, in 2011: “Do not marry.
This family will destroy you!”
The same year, he produced
Unlawful King
, a film centered on the mysteries around the death of Lady Diana, shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
The work will sink into oblivion, for lack of finding a distribution company in the United States.
Charges of sexual harassment
At the beginning of the 2010s, Mohamed Al-Fayed aspired to a new tranquility.
The businessman sells Harrods stores and sells the Fulham club.
Now a refugee in his home in Surrey, the businessman did not escape Hurricane Me Too.
In 2017, the billionaire is indeed accused of having sexually harassed young employees of Harrods.
Three women, some of whom were teenagers at the time of the events, testify in the program "Dispatches", on the British channel Channel 4, which devotes an episode to the case.
One of them, Cheska Hill-Wood, recounts an episode that occurred when she was 17 years old.
She explains that she was hired as the magnate's personal assistant in 1993.
The young woman then wishes to become an actress.
Mohamed Al-Fayed reportedly told her one day that he could help her in her career, and asked to put on a bathing suit, arguing that her son Dodi needed to examine his figure to hire her as an actress.
"He grabbed me and kissed me," she recalls.
I pushed him and said, "What are you doing?"
He laughed a little."
To which the billionaire would have replied: "If you don't sleep with me, I can't help you in your acting career."
Allegations that the main interested party has always denied.
A hereditary tenacity
Now 93 years old, Mohamed Al-Fayed lives a more peaceful daily life.
At least in appearance: the billionaire would indeed be cold with his son Omar, to whom he had to sell Harrods stores.
The latter would have, moreover, inherited the bellicose temperament of his father.
In 2021, Omar Fayed thus initiated legal proceedings against his sister Camilla.
He accuses the latter and her husband of having sent bodyguards to intercept him violently, during one of his rare visits to his father.
The main interested party claims that she thought her brother was drugged during the incident.
This did not prevent Omar from claiming 100,000 dollars (100,900 euros) in damages.
The judge has since ruled that the two should settle the dispute privately.
A quarrel from which they would nevertheless have preserved Mohamed Al-Fayed, who never ceased to mourn the disappearance of his son Dodi.
It is rumored that the businessman, whose fortune today amounts to 1.9 billion dollars (1.9 billion euros), would spend "300 days a year" at Dodi's grave.
This one is buried in a mausoleum, located in the enclosure of the manor of his father, Barrow Green Court, in Surrey.
