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

Lorana Sullivan reports on an article published by the American business magazine Forbes focusing on Fayed's dealings with the Sultan of Brunei's spiritual adviser, the Indian mystic known as "The Swami", whom Mohamed Al Fayed had bribed in 1984 to introduce him to the Sultan, and whom the Sultan turned to subsequently to help him retrieve his millions.

The Observer 
Sunday, 28 February 1988

DEPARTMENT of Trade inspectors looking into the circumstances of the Egyptian Fayed brothers' £615 million takeover of House of Fraser might like to cast their eyes over the current issue of Forbes, America's most influential business magazine, writes Lorana Sullivan.
    There, contributing editor Pranay Gupte takes a hard look at the Fabulous Pharaohs and their assertions that they purchased HOF with their own liquid funds.
    In the article entitled 'The swami with the golden touch,' Gupte begins:
    'Nemi Chandra Gandhi, better known as Chandra Swami Maharaj, is no ordinary mystic.  Clad in his flowing white robes and wearing a look of beatitude, the swami is as adept at the financial as he is with the spiritual.  He claims to have as admirers such figures as President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and U.S. Representative Jim Wright.  Not the least of those who believed in him was Sir Muda Hassanal Bolkiah Muizzadin Waddaulah, the sultan of Brunei, reputed to be one of the wealthiest men on earth.
    'In early 1985 the sultan became worried about $900 million he had entrusted to an Egyptian businessman, Mohamed Al-Fayed.  It was the swami who introduced the sultan to Al-Fayed.  Could the swami help the sultan get back his money?  From his New Delhi ashram the swami jetted first-class to Singapore for a hastily convened meeting at the Holiday Inn Royal, one of the sultan's many commercial properties.  There, the Hindu swami recited Sanskrit hymns to invoke divine blessings for the Muslim sultan, but mantras weren't on his royal mind.  Money was.

    "The sultan told Swamiji he had given $900 million to Mohammed Al-Fayed," recalls Dr Prathap Reddy, a prominent Indian physician and a disciple of Chandra Swami.  Reddy, who was at the Singapore meeting, continues: "But now the sultan was uneasy about the whole thing.  The sultan asked Swamiji how he could get his money back."  The sultan had probably read speculation in the British press about where his money had gone.  Shortly before this, Al-Fayed had plunked down about £573 million to buy the House of Fraser Plc., parent company of London's Harrods department store, snatching the prize from British industrialist R. W (Tiny) Rowland.  Had Al-Fayed used the sultan's money?

    'From Singapore the swami flew to London.  There, in an apartment, at one Carlos Place, in fashionable Mayfair, on June 6 and 7 1985, the swami met with Al-Fayed.  Unknown to Al-Fayed, the swami tape-recorded the conversation.  Relaxed in the presence of his old friend the swami, Al-Fayed boasted: "You ask His Majesty (the sultan), I have power of attorney -- I can do anything on earth."
    'On the same tapes, played for a Forbes reporter in London, Al-Fayed says: "I can have $10 billion if I want it." '
    Gupte suggests as an answer:
    'If Al-Fayed used his own £573 million to swing the House of Fraser deal, he made the fortune in record time.  The biographical fog created by Al-Fayed's London-based public relations consultant Brian Basham has it that Al-Fayed inherited vast riches from his father, Ali.  Basham says the father was involved in growing and shipping Egyptian cotton for the mills of Lancashire.  Mohamed is said to have expanded the family fortune in the petrodollar-rich states of the Persian Gulf.'
    But, says Gupte, Fayed moved on to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in June 1964, 'where he called himself Sheikh Al-Fayed and claimed to be the representative of the Emir of Kuwait'.

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