Main Index

Section Six Index:
Mohamed 'Al' Fayed - the facts

The extracts below are taken from articles published in the British press, plus two US newspapers, between 4 November 1984 and 8 September 1985.  They all relate fictional accounts of the Egyptian Fayed brothers' wealth and background, based on interviews Mohamed Al Fayed held with British newspapers following his acquisition of Lonrho plc's 29.9% stake in Harrods store chain House of Fraser. 
      Significantly, whereas the British newspapers repeat Fayed's lies as fact without undertaking any checks (including, initially, even the Lonrho-owned Observer) the two US papers distinguish themselves by making clear that they are reporting claims made by Fayed and his representatives.
      Lonrho's chief executive Tiny Rowland immediately challenged Fayed's story about his family and business interests.  Accordingly, The Observer's financial staff began to probe the Egyptian's claims, along with financial journalists working for the Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Financial Times.  However, only The Observer's financial journalists persisted, eventually exposing Fayed's lies through systematic research. 
      Two dates should be borne in mind when reviewing these extracts:

"We would not want to see Harrods Americanised, Japanised, or Germanised.  It is British," says this undisguised Anglophile, whose old established family has been doing business with Britain for more than a century.  They started shipping cotton from Egypt to Liverpool...  That everybody has not heard of the Al Fayed brothers is by choice.  Their family fortune in shipping, banking (they are the largest shareholders in one of the major Texan banks) and property could be worth at least $500 million.
      The Observer,  4 Nov 84

The billionaire brothers, Mohamed, Ali and Salah, control more than half the shipping in the Mediterranean.            Daily Mail,  5 Nov 84

Their family fortune is huge -- though neither they nor their London advisers are prepared to say how large -- and is based on shipping, property and banking interest in Europe, America and the Mediterranean.
      The Guardian,  5 Nov 84

Mohamed and his brothers Ali and Salah, have climbed a social Everest since their great grandfather, Ali Ali Fayed founded the family fortunes a century ago by growing cotton on the banks of the Nile and exporting it in his own ships to the mills of Lancashire...  Mohamed's tonnage in freighters plying the Mediterranean makes him an 'Onassis' of cargo.
      Daily Mail,  10 Nov 84

The Al-Fayeds - Mohamed, Ali and Salah - are members of one of Egypt's most distinguished families, and have had a close association with Britain.  The origins of their wealth go back to 1876 when their grandfather began business in Egypt, shipping cotton to Liverpool.  The brothers were raised in Alexandria and educated at British schools.
      Sunday Telegraph,  3 March 85

The Al-Fayed brothers - Mohamed, the brains of the business empire, Ali and Salah - are fourth generation Egyptian money.  Their great grandfather founded the family's financial dynasty growing cotton on the banks of the Nile and exporting it in his own ships to the UK.
      Financial Times,  5 March 85

His family fortunes were planted in cotton by his great grandfather, who began shipping it in his own freighters from Alexandria to the cotton mills of Lancashire, via Liverpool.  He and his brothers left their native Egypt, as the nationalisation of commerce loomed with the abdication of King Farouk.
      Daily Mail,  8 March 1985

The brothers delicately pointed out that their family lived in some luxury when even the Saudi royal family lived in tents in the desert.  The family does not see itself in the Arab tradition at all, but as part of something much older.  Egypt, Mohamed pointed out, was the cradle of civilisation.  He and his family, he implied, are inheritors of the tradition of the Pharaohs, not that of the desert...  Already wealthy when they left Egypt, the Al-Fayeds have multiplied their fortune many times since...  They display a lofty disdain for the nouveaux riches of the Arab world.  Their great grandfather, Ali Ali Fayed, began the family fortune growing cotton in the Nile delta.  This was shipped to mills in Lancashire and sometimes even ended up as Egyptian sheets, a great luxury at the time, in Harrods.
      Sunday Times,  10 March 1985

Can there be any real doubt about the Al Fayeds or their money or their background?  Would top City names like Kleinwort Benson, Warburg and Cazenove have approved this deal without checking them out?  Or the canny Professor Roland Smith [House of Fraser's chairman]?  To say the very least, I very much doubt it.
      Sunday Telegraph,  24 March 1985

According to Mr Al Fayed, the source of the family's wealth is the Egyptian cotton business.  The family traded in cotton and owned several ships, and was able to spirit its money out of the country ahead of the massive nationalizations of Gamel Abdel Nasser the 1960s.
      Wall Street Journal,  9 Aug 1985

Mohamed took the lead in establishing the family outside Egypt, using the worldwide contacts that came from shipping.  "Our ships go everywhere.  You are known and your family is known" he explains.
      Mail on Sunday,  8 Sept 85

Mr Fayed's account of his life is one of honourable enterprise and duty to family.  He was born in 1933 in Alexandria, into a family that prospered in the 19th Century by growing cotton along the Nile and shipping it to the mills in northwest England...  They have a shipping empire, said by Kleinwort Benson to consist of more than 40 ships, that is operated primarily from bases in Cairo and Genoa.
      New York Times,  8 Sept 85

52 British press articles on the Fayeds, published prior to the DTI report of March 1990