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Index to British press articles on the Fayeds' purchase of Harrods

On 9th January 1986, three days before the publication of this article, the 10th January issue of satirical magazine Private Eye appeared on Britain's newsstands.  It contained a leading article written by hard-Left Daily Mirror journalist Paul Foot, reporting allegations that in October 1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's son, Mark, had accompanied Mohamed Al Fayed on a trip to see the Sultan of Brunei. 
    The article alleged that Mark was representing a construction company with ambitions of winning a contract to built a new university for the tiny Sultanate.  It was suggested that Mark had with him a letter of introduction from the Minister of Finance of Oman, from whom in April 1981 the British construction company Cementation had won a similar university construction contract with Mark's help.
    The article hinted that the company on whose behalf Mark had acted on the Brunei trip could have been the British conglomerate Trafalgar House, on whose behalf Mark was also said to have acted previously.
    The timing of the trip -- October 1994 -- is significant insofar that it was on 30 October 1984 that Trade Secretary Norman Tebbit inexplicably extended by another 90 days the Monopolies & Mergers Commission's investigation into Lonrho's bid for House of Fraser. 
    As a consequence of the revelations in Private Eye Tiny Rowland supplied the Observer with more information already in his possession, such as the dates of the flights to and from Brunei (24 & 26 Oct.), the route taken (via Singapore), and that the aircraft used was Fayed's own private Gulf Stream executive jet - three bold statements of fact, which, if untrue, Fayed would easily have been able to disprove by reference to his diary and his Gulf Stream's flight log.
    Armed with the information Observer editor Donald Trelford turned to his hard-Left political journalist David Leigh to write up an article.  Leigh was the paper's resident 'expert' on Mark Thatcher, having been responsible for authoring some twelve articles between January and April 1984 on Mark's dealings in Oman.  However Leigh, who had a burning antipathy towards Rowland, refused, claiming that the story was a "Rowland plant" -- though its original source, Paul Foot, was a personal friend and political soulmate of Leigh who had no connection with the Observer and no particular regard for Tiny Rowland either.
    In the event Trelford wrote up the article himself, under the by-line 'staff reporter'.  Following its publication Mohamed Fayed issued a denial (which he refused to sign), and which he failed to substantiate with documentary evidence such as his aircraft's flight log or appointment diary.  Mark Thatcher, for his part, refused to deny the story, which remains the case up to the present time.  Furthermore, the next issue of Private Eye, published after the Observer article reproduced here, carried a follow up piece implying that Mohamed Fayed's denial was untruthful.

The Observer 
Sunday, 12 January 1986

THE Prime Minister will be questioned closely when Parliament resumes this week about a remarkable sequence of events involving her son, Mark Thatcher, and his connection with the Sultan of Brunei, reputed to be the world's richest man, and Mohammed Fayed, the mysterious Egyptian businessman who has obtained control of Harrods. 
    The questions will centre on the extent to which Mrs Thatcher's Government -- and her son -- may have been skilfully used by a foreign entrepreneur.  They will relate to the following points: -

• Mark's unpublicised visit in October, 1984, with Mohammed Fayed to Brunei, the very small and very rich oil kingdom on the northern tip of Borneo which joined the Commonwealth last year;


• his involvement in a multi-million pound building contract in Brunei;


• his continuing commercial relationship with the Gulf state of Oman;


• a meeting at Downing Street early last year, attended by Fayed and the Sultan, after which five billion dollars were reported to have been transferred by Brunei from the United States to relieve the British sterling crisis;


• the circumstances in which Fayed, known to have access to the Sultan's funds, was given permission in March last year to bid for the House of Fraser without a reference to the Monopolies Commission;


• a hastily planned meeting in April last year in the Sultan's opulent palace in Brunei -- also attended by Fayed -- at which the Sultan officially presented the Prime Minister with a gold bracelet studded with diamonds and rubies, and which Fayed claims he arranged.

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