UK police say 40 women have made sex crimes claims against late Harrods owner

LONDON — Police in London said Friday that 40 more women have made allegations of rape or sexual assault against the late Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed since the BBC broadcast claims by several former employees of the London department store last month.

The Metropolitan Police force said it had received allegations “relating to 40 victim-survivors and covering offenses including sexual assault and rape” taking place between 1979 and 2013.

They are in addition to the 21 women who went to the police between 2005 and 2023 with sex crime allegations against the businessman. He was never prosecuted and died last year aged 94.

Police urged victims of Al Fayed and anyone with information about offenses to report it. Commander Stephen Clayman said detectives would review the information “to see if there are any allegations of criminality that can be pursued.”

Police and Harrods executives are facing questions about why action wasn’t taken against Al Fayed while he was alive. He was questioned by detectives in 2008 over the alleged sexual abuse of a 15-year-old, and in 2009 and 2015 police passed files of evidence about him to the Crown Prosecution Service. He was never charged.

The current managing director of Harrods, Michael Ward, said last month that the store was “deeply sorry” for failing employees. He said it is clear Al Fayed “presided over a toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation, fear of repercussion and sexual misconduct.”

Al Fayed’s family has not commented.

The Egypt-born businessman moved to Britain in the 1960s and bought Harrods, an upmarket retail emporium in London’s tony Knightsbridge district, in the mid-1980s. Al Fayed sold Harrods in 2010 to a company owned by the state of Qatar through its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.

He became a well-known figure through his ownership of the store and the London soccer team Fulham. He was often in the headlines after his son Dodi was killed alongside Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

Al Fayed spent years promoting the conspiracy theory that the royal family had arranged the accident because they did not approve of Diana dating an Egyptian.

An inquest concluded that Diana and Dodi died because of the reckless actions of their driver — an employee of the Ritz Hotel in Paris owned by Al Fayed — and paparazzi chasing the couple. Separate inquiries in the United Kingdom and France also concluded there was no conspiracy.