2023-09-02 00:53:14
The billionaire Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed passed away last Wednesday, August 30, as reported 48 hours later in a statement by his family. “He enjoyed a long and full retirement with his loved ones. The family asks that his privacy be respected at this time, ”says the text. Al-Fayed, who died at the age of 94, retired from public life in the last decade, and lived in his mansion in Surrey (United Kingdom) with his Finnish wife, Heini.
Owner of London’s legendary Harrods department store and Fulham FC football club for a quarter of a century, the businessman was a leading figure in British economic and political life, seeing his son, Dodi, make headlines in tabloid newspapers as a result of his romance with Diana Spencer, Lady Di, by then already divorced from Carlos of England. Both died in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997, during a chase in which they were fleeing the paparazzi through the streets of the French capital.
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The death of his son, and of Diana herself, left Mohamed Al-Fayed devastated, who began to feed conspiracy theories to explain the accident, and blamed what happened on the British royal house —specifically, Felipe de Edinburgh—, to the British and French secret services and even to the American CIA.
Born in Alexandria in January 1929, the son of a school teacher, in 1954 he married Samira Khashoggi, the sister of the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who died in June 2017. The result of that marriage, which lasted barely two years, It was Mohamed Abdel Mena Fayed, better known by his diminutive of Dodi.
For a few years the businessman started a shipping company, but his real power and relevance began to reach him in the 1960s, when he became a personal adviser to one of the richest men in the world, the sultan from Brunei. In the 1970s, Al Fayed moved to England (the “Al” in his last name, legend has it, was incorporated in that country to give his name more status) and has never moved from there. . Welcomed by his money but never fully accepted by the United Kingdom establishment, he was even denied British nationality on two occasions —in 1994 and in 1999.
Mohamed Al-Fayed and Lady Di, in Saint-Tropez (France), in July 1997. No credit ( / Cordon Press / Cordon Press)
In addition to taking ownership of the Harrods department store in 1985, in that same year he bought the Ritz hotel in Paris, the Parisian villa where the Dukes of Windsor lived for years in exile (King Edward VIII, who abdicated in favor of his brother George VI, and his wife, the divorced American Wallis Simpson), who was in a serious state of neglect, and a farm in Scotland of more than 26,000 hectares. That year, in addition, he married the Finnish actress and model Heini Wathen, with whom he had four children.
The purchase of Harrods, a symbol of British pride, was surrounded by controversy from the start. Al-Fayed, who had worked in his early British years for the Lonrho mining conglomerate, managed to defeat this very company in the bid for House of Fraser, the parent company that owns the department store. For a total of 842 million euros, as reported at the time, the Egyptian businessman came to take over more than 100 establishments throughout the United Kingdom. Roland Tiny Rowland, the British businessman at the helm of Lonrho, who had been Al-Fayed’s friend and confidant for some time, accused him of having lied to the British government and of having used money from the government to defeat his competitor. Sultan of Brunei. A UK Department of Trade and Industry report found that Al-Fayed had not been truthful about his fortune, business and financial interests, but was allowed to retain ownership of Harrods, as he did for 25 years. until sale in 2010 to Qatar Holdings.
Diana’s friendship
The Egyptian businessman forged a friendly relationship with Lady Di through his philanthropic participation in many of the charitable events sponsored by the British royal house. In the summer of 1997, Al-Fayed invited Diana and her two sons, Guillermo and Enrique, to spend a few days on his yacht Jonikal, off the coast of southern France. There, Lady Di strengthened her relationship with the magnate’s son, Dodi, who was dedicated to producing films and had obtained her first and only success 16 years earlier with the film Chariots of Fire.
Al-Fayed was involved in the scandal called “money in exchange for questions” in 1994. Members of the British Parliament introduced, in the control and interpellation sessions to the Government, specific questions on matters of interest to businessmen willing to pay them a fee in return. amount of money. The Egyptian was one of those who managed to place his private business affairs in the House of Commons debates.
In November 2022, Forbes magazine estimated Al-Fayed’s fortune at around 2.2 billion euros.
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