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

Observer financial journalist Michael Gillard reports the extraordinary case of Mohamed 'Al' Fayed's involvement with British construction company Bernard Sunley and Sons plc, about which the company had issued a High Court writ against Fayed two days earlier on Friday 24 March. 
    Four years earlier in March 1985, as part of their activities supporting the Fayeds' bid for Harrods, bankers Kleinwort Benson had sought and obtained from the chairman of Sunley, John Sunley, a letter confirming that Mohamed Fayed had earned £40 million during the 1970s from his role obtaining for Sunley construction contracts in the Gulf, supposedly valued at £400 million.  These included Sunley's engagement as the principal contractor in the construction of the Dubai Trade Centre.  However, it was later confirmed that the contracts were worth around half of what John Sunley's letter 'confirmed.'  John Sunley, it transpired, had written a false account at Fayed's behest. 
    (Four days after this article was published The Observer published its surprise special mid-week edition, containing extracts from a copy of the official DTI report obtained by Tiny Rowland).

The Observer 
Sunday, 26 March 1989

A writ claiming repayment of £40 million and damages was on Friday served on Mohamed Fayed by contractors Bernard Sunley & Sons.  Fayed and his brothers own the Harrods group House of Fraser. 
    The writ refers to commissions and lump sum payments made by Sunley to Fayed over 10 years to 1978 concerning construction contracts in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. 
    The writ claims damages for 'fraud and/or deceit and/or conspiracy and/or inducement to to breach of fiduciary duty' in respect of the payments which were 'fraudulently made and were false'.  The writ makes further reference to 'a dishonest and fraudulent scheme' that was allegedly not reported to the company's auditors and directors. 
    Relations between Bernard Sunley and the Fayeds have clearly changed since March 1985 when, during the Fayeds' bid for House of Fraser, the chairman of Bernard Sunley, John Sunley, at the request and with the assistance of the Fayeds' advisers Kleinwort Benson wrote a fulsome letter of praise.  The letter was one of only two supplied to the Department of Trade and Industry.  The next day Trade Secretary Norman Tebbit waved through the Fayed bid. 
    The Sunley letter claimed that the Fayeds' had assisted in obtaining contracts worth 'in excess of '£400 million'.  That letter was the focus of considerable investigation by the DTI inspectors whose report on the Fayed takeover, delivered in July last year, has still to be published.  Present Trade secretary Lord Young has delayed publication pending inquiries by the Serious Fraud Office. 
    Despite repeated efforts the inspectors were unable to obtain from Sunley documentary evidence verifying the disputed £400 million figure or the £40 million in commissions the inspectors were told had been paid to Fayed. 
    In a letter to Lord Young last week, Mr R W 'Tiny' Rowland, chief executive of Lonrho, owners of The Observer, wrote: 'The (Sunley) partners had declared that there were absolutely no records…  the figures were those which Mohamed Fayed had instructed them to give… John Sunley's private notes show he believed the real figures to be less than one half of the sum and that he knew the auditors had no records.'
    Quoting a letter written in July last year, Rowland reveals that the inspectors declared: 'You have not responded to this evidence… which shows why the inspectors are disposed to reject Sunley's evidence.'
    These commissions are a crucial element in supporting the Fayed claim to have been able to buy HoF out of their own old established billionaire resources -- a claim The Observer has always disputed. 
    Giving a clear clue to their findings regarding that claim, the inspectors in their letter to Sunley remark: 'On a number of occasions in the course of their inquiries they have investigated very high figures and found that they are not substantiated by reliable contemporary evidence.'

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Special Observer mid-week edition