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Fayed's fury was stoked, he says, because he was given assurances that his and his brother's applications would pass. The government calls that claim "rubbish." The British petition for citizenship requires, among other things, that the applicant be 18 or over, have up to five years' residence, and be of sound mind and "good character." Regarding character, the British civil service is bound to respect the conclusions of the D.T.I. report, which was written by two prominent "inspectors." Sir Henry Brooke, who is now a High Court judge, and Hugh Aldous, who is now the managing partner of a prestigious accounting firm. When Fayed and his two brothers, Ali and Salah, suddenly burst onto the scene in 1984 to buy Harrods, they said they came from an old, rich Egyptian cotton-growing family. The report later documented that Fayed was actually the firstborn son of a humble schoolteacher and grew up in the slums of Alexandria. The report also claimed that the Fayeds were not remotely wealthy enough to have
used their own money to put up the $700 million cash bid to buy House of Fraser, Harrods' parent company, a vast department-store chain extending from Scotland to Scandinavia. The report suggested that the money had come from the Sultan of Brunei, without his knowledge. Fayed maintains that the money was his.
According to Fayed, the applications for citizenship were prompted largely by the discomfort his brother Ali feels every time he must part from his English wife and three English-born sons to pass through British customs from the "aliens" line. (Mohamed is married to a Finnish woman, with whom he has four children, aged 8 to 14.) Fayed blames Home Secretary Michael Howard, under whose jurisdiction the applications fell, for creating a convoluted conspiracy against him. So far he has failed to back up the charges with any hard evidence, but his wrath encompasses the whole ruling elite. "I can still hear the prejudice, the racists at the core of the upper class. They call themselves the so-called Establishment."
"The people he turned on were his friends-nobody quite knows why he did it," says Lord McAlpine, a long-time confidant of Margaret Thatcher's who was Conservative Party treasurer and who used to visit Fayed regularly. Fayed says that McAlpine accepted £250,000 ($367,000) in political contributions from him between 1985 and the election year of 1987, when it was announced that the D.T.I. was going to investigate Fayed. British law does not require disclosure of political contributions from individuals. Lord McAlpine acknowledges several Fayed donations to Conservative causes but not specific amounts, adding, "He would have been sent a thank-you note and a receipt from me. Ask him to show you the receipts."
Alistair McAlpine responds to the Fayed brothers' charges of snobbery and racism by saying, "Then why do they want to live here? I feel very sympathetic towards Al Fayed. I feel he's been very badly treated, but it's largely their own fault. They get misunderstood; they try too hard. I can't fathom why they want British citizenship."
"Do you know what 'wog' stands for?" asks Lord Wyatt, another Thatcher confidant who has attacked Fayed in print. "Wily Oriental gentleman." Woodrow Wyatt calls the whole business "absolute nonsense." He says that Fayed's attacks are a result of his losing his case in a unanimous decision last September at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg-the final stage in a futile attempt to have the D.T.I. report erased. "The government said no, and the Court of Human Rights said no, and it sort of drives them dotty. It remains a slur on their character."
"The Fayeds dishonestly misrepresented their origins, their wealth, their business interests and their resources: the D.T.I. report states early on. More than 700 pages later, it ends by saying, "The lies of Mohamed Fayed and his success in 'gagging' the Press created ...a new fact: that lies were the truth and that the truth was a lie." A vehement denial issued by Fayed at the time said that the report was "worthless" and "shocking." The fact that no action was ever taken against him by the British government, he says, proves that there was no wrongdoing. His enemies, on the other hand, charge the government with a massive cover-up to protect him.
The D.T.I. investigation was ordered in 1987, a full two years after Fayed's petition to buy Harrods was hastily waved through by the Thatcher government in 10 days without careful scrutiny. Fayed believes the probe came about through the ceaseless, vengeful efforts of the man he had outwitted to win the store, the equally eccentric mega-tycoon Roland W. "Tiny" Rowland, then chairman of the conglomerate Lonrho, which is based on mining and agricultural interests in Africa. Rowland hired private detectives to comb the world to uncover whatever incriminating facts they could about Fayed. Using the best investigative reporting that his money could buy, including the resources of his own newspaper The Observer, he flooded the Establishment with a series of detailed reports depicting his rival as a liar who had bought off the government and a con artist who had used the Sultan of Brunei's money to buy Harrods.
Fayed's life story is right out of Aladdin or Ali Baba. The characters include global fixers and dealers who think nothing of trying to destabilize countries, seduce the world's wealthiest man, sue whomever whenever, buy the press, and wage private wars. It takes place in the habitat of the offshore superrich, complete with yachts and jets, where friends become enemies, enemies become friends, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Truth here is rather like a Platonic ideal-it must remain an abstraction.
Michael Cole, however, continues to define his boss as a wronged and selfless hero who has been consistently victimized. "He thinks he did the right thing for this country. He has a very developed sense of morality. Of course, he wouldn't call it that," Cole says. "He's so used to being slapped in the face he doesn't even think about it. ...All he's interested in is his good family name and reputation, his children, and his own health and happiness. He doesn't look for praise. He has his own foundation to relieve real suffering-he thinks it's his sacred duty. He has a very personal relationship with his God." Cole sighs. "I sometimes think this is a charity with a business attached."
"Enter a Different World," Harrods' long-time slogan beckoned. With Mohamed Al Fayed at the helm, it is a darkly suspicious world with laws unto itself. Fayed, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars refurbishing Harrods, has visibly tightened security and now even sells the display windows to vendors. He recently unveiled plans for a new hotel across the street, and he's designing a nearby Harrods village on the Thames. But in the 10 years of his ownership, Fayed has had five managing directors; he is embroiled in numerous cases brought for unfair dismissal, and he is accused of everything from racial discrimination and enforced H.I.V. tests to bugging employees' phones and maintaining a fleet of secretaries - "some who type and some who don't," according to a former employee. It is, says former Harrods deputy chairman Christoph Bettermann, "management by fear."
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