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

The 1990 DTI Inspectors' report found that Mohamed 'Al'-Fayed had submitted false evidence to the Trade Secretary Norman Tebbit to facilitate his acquisition of the Harrods store group five years earlier, and had given false evidence and lied to the Inspectors themselves when they investigated the affair.  Yet no law was found to have been broken.  Since these early transgressions Fayed has continued to practice gross offences and crimes under the averted eyes of the Metropolitan Police, quite often with the police themselves acting as his willing accomplices. 
    They began in the mid-1980s, when Fayed employed a woman named Francesca Pollard to intimidate his perceived enemies, involving the dissemination of gross false corruption allegations against, and harassment of, the members and an adviser of a Commons Select Committee, and the then Home Secretary Michael Howard MP [See "The Vendettas of Mohamed 'Al' Fayed", also in Section Six].  Yet though the Metropolitan Police knew of Fayed's outrageous activities and the distress caused to his victims, they took no action.  Fayed was not even interviewed when Francesca Pollard went public with a sworn affidavit listing her activities on Fayed's behalf.

Mohamed Al Fayed also prosecuted vendettas against his employees with whom he had fallen out, usually involving false allegations of theft or embezzlement.  At Fayed's behest the Metropolitan Police enthusiastically pursued each of his victims, only to drop every inquiry when each proved valueless.  At the very least the police's experience provided ample evidence for a charge of "wasting police time" to be brought against the Egyptian.  One of his victims, Eamon Coyle, provided the police with clear evidence that Fayed had attempted to blackmail him into giving false evidence against former Harrods employee Bob Loftus, who was suing Fayed for unfair dismissal.  Yet the Metropolitan Police did nothing and continued acting as extensions of Fayed's machine.

During his evidence to the Standards Committee in October 1997, Neil Hamilton read out on live TV Bob Loftus's witness statement, in which Loftus gave a detailed account of how, two years earlier, Fayed had coerced his staff into breaking into Tiny Rowland's Harrods safe deposit box, whereupon emeralds and other valuables were removed.  Rowland had provided Hamilton with Loftus's statement to read out specifically to pressurise the Metropolitan Police into taking action, having first informed them of the break-in five months earlier in May.  A further two months later in December, frustrated by the Met's steadfast indolence, Rowland instigated private civil proceedings against Fayed for theft. 
    The following March of 1998, a full ten months after first being informed, the Metropolitan Police eventually interviewed Fayed and three senior staff about the break-in.  Having waited ten months to begin, the Met then concluded its inquiries in record time and passed the file to the Crown Prosecution Service with a recommendation to drop the matter for "lack of evidence".  Four months later the CPS did exactly that. 
    Rowland died from skin cancer shortly afterwards, but his widow, Josie, proceeded with the civil lawsuit.  Another four months later in November, at the High Court in London, Josie Rowland won over £2 million in costs and damages after Fayed admitted the break-in (though he continued to deny the theft).  The break-in alone constituted a serious crime.  Despite Fayed's admission, the Metropolitan Police did nothing.

    More recently still, on 13 February 2000 the Mail on Sunday ran a major front page story (right) alleging that, during the course of Neil Hamilton's libel action against Fayed the previous November of 1999, Fayed had paid £10,000 for confidential draft legal papers that had been stolen from the chambers of Hamilton's barristers, in an attempt to pervert the course of the trial. 
    Those alleged to be involved included a character called Benjamin 'the binman' Pell, who earns his living rifling the garbage of lawyers and show business agents for information to sell to Britain's newspapers; a Left-wing journalist named Mark Hollingsworth, who was alleged to have taken the stolen documents to Fayed and received the cash; and Fayed's head of security, John Macnamara, who allegedly handed the cash to Hollingsworth on Fayed's behalf.  Pell later alleged that he had been asked to thieve the papers to help Fayed's defence by The Guardian's comment editor, David Leigh, who happens to be a friend and political soul mate of Mark Hollingsworth from their years spent working together at The Observer and Granada Television's World in Action programme. 

    Neil Hamilton immediately lodged an appeal against the libel verdict.  The Metropolitan Police swung into action by instigating an investigation into the allegations.  As the allegations had been substantiated by Hollingsworth's admission to a Mail on Sunday journalist, which the journalist had secretly tape-recorded, it seemed an open and shut case of a provable conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. 
    However, instead of assisting Hamilton’s case the police ‘investigation’ proved a great encumbrance.  Pell had indicated a willingness to spill the beans on the conspiracy by turning Queen’s evidence in exchange for immunity from prosecution but the Met had little appetite for the idea.  And so, nine months later, with a week to go before Hamilton's appeal hearing, the Metropolitan Police transferred the file to the Crown Prosecution Service, leaving Pell's position still unclear as to whether he would be able to help Hamilton’s legal team.  On 3 December 2000 the Mail on Sunday reported the developments in an item entitled Police send Al Fayed file to CPS::

    THE Crown Prosecution Service is considering whether to prosecute Mohamed Al Fayed over allegations that he paid £10,000 for copies of stolen documents that aided him in his 'cash for questions' libel battle with Neil Hamilton. 
    Police confirmed last night that a file on the Harrods boss, who defeated the action launched by former Tory MP Neil Hamilton a year ago, has been handed to the CPS...
    The revelations have also led to Hamilton seeking a judgement in the Court of Appeal next week to reverse Al Fayed's victory on the grounds that it was fraudulently won. 
    But a spokesman for Al Fayed said: "We have been assured by the authorities [i.e. Metropolitan Police] that the recommendation to the Crown Prosecution Service is that there is no case to answer.  If there had been, Mr Al Fayed and his staff should have been interviewed.  This has not been the case."
    

To drop an investigation into an alleged conspiracy to pervert the course of justice without even bothering to interview the main alleged conspirators, supposedly because of "insufficient evidence", when evidence of a taped admission existed, provides stark evidence of the ambivalent attitude to law enforcement now exhibited by England's premier media-sensitive police force.
    In the event, Hamilton lost his appeal, despite all three judges agreeing that Fayed had indeed bought the stolen papers for £10,000 as alleged; and that following the deal Fayed had induced the theft of more material.  However, though the evidence that led the judges to this conclusion was aired in Open Court, the Metropolitan Police did not re-open their inquires.

Fayed's vendettas

Continued overleaf: RAPE!