Mohamed Al Fayed’s claims surrounding the Firm and the death of his son led to him losing the royal warrants when he owned Britain’s most prestigious department store, Harrods.
Mr Al Fayed’s son Dodi died aged 42 in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997, alongside his partner at the time, Diana, Princess of Wales.
In the years that followed Dodi’s billionaire father became increasingly convinced the Royal Family and British establishment had somehow been involved in the fatal accident.
It’s probable Mr Al Fayed still believed there was a connection when he died this week almost 26 years to the day his beloved son lost his life.
At the 2008 inquest into Diana, Princess of Wales’s death, Mr Al Fayed claimed that she and his son were killed because the princess was pregnant with Dodi’s baby at the time of her death, and that the couple had been planning to announce their engagement, the Mirror reports.
He said in court: “I am the only person they told.”
However, a post-mortem examination at the time found the Princess was not pregnant and her friends also claimed that it wasn’t possible.
During the inquest, Mr Al Fayed went on to claim Prince Philip was a “Nazi” and a “racist” and said: “It’s time to send him back to Germany where he comes from.”
For years during his ownership of Harrods, Mr Al Fayed had enjoyed a good relationship with the Firm, sponsoring the late Queen’s beloved Royal Windsor Horse Show from 1984 to 1997.
But after the Paris car crash the relationship between the flamboyant businessman and the royals quickly soured.
In 1998, Harrods was dropped as the sponsor of the horse show in what was said at the time as an “entirely a commercial decision”, but it was reported there was Royal revulsion surrounding Mr Al Fayed’s comments about an “establishment conspiracy” causing the deaths of his son and the princess.
By 2001, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles’s royal warrants expired, with Harrods not seeking to reapply for them. Prince Philip had already withdrawn his own warrant in January 2000.
Mr Al Fayed did not just accuse the royals of having a hand in the death of his son, he also levelled accusations at former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Princess Diana’s sister Sarah McCorquodale and her husband Robert Fellowes, French toxicologists, French ambulance drivers, the car’s driver Henri Paul, two former London police chiefs, three bodyguards, and even some of Diana’s closest friends.
He said that the princess’s friends, who had told the inquest there was no chance she could be pregnant, were lying, claiming: “All the witnesses who have been saying this are part of the cover-up and have been told what to say.”
The billionaire’s relationship with the Royal Family was recently depicted in season five of The Crown, where Mr Al Fayed, played by Salim Daw, was seen getting to know Diana. Mr Al Fayed had taken control of Harrods in 1985 and he had also purchased the Ritz hotel in Paris in 1979; and was known for being the owner of Fulham FC between 1997 and 2013.
A report by former Met Police commissioner Lord Stevens published in 2006 rejected the murder claims voiced by some, including Mr Al Fayed’s.
The inquests into the deaths finished in 2008, with a jury returning a verdict that the ‘People’s Princess’ and her boyfriend were unlawfully killed.
In 2013, Scotland Yard concluded that there was “no credible evidence” of any SAS involvement in the death, following claims that the couple were murdered by a member of British special forces.
In a statement released today by Fulham FC, his family said: “Mrs Mohamed Al Fayed, her children and grandchildren wish to confirm that her beloved husband, their father and their grandfather, Mohamed, has passed away peacefully of old age on Wednesday August 30, 2023.
“He enjoyed a long and fulfilled retirement surrounded by his loved ones. The family have asked for their privacy to be respected at this time.”
