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LONDON: Few issues had been past the attain of billionaire Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Al-Fayed who has died on the age of 94. Inns, yachts and a soccer membership had been purchased with ease however he by no means acquired the popularity he craved. His son Dodi’s fateful relationship with princess Diana might need been the second Fayed lastly gained acceptance by the British “Institution” elite. As an alternative it marked his everlasting estrangement after he insisted — with out proof — that Queen Elizabeth II’s husband Prince Philip had ordered the Paris automotive crash wherein Diana and Dodi had been killed to forestall her marrying a Muslim.
Fayed lived most of his life in Britain, the place for many years he was by no means removed from the headlines. However to his frustration he was by no means granted UK citizenship nor admitted into the higher echelons of British society. Fayed shall be remembered most for his outspoken method, his revenge on the Conservative celebration, his controversial buy of the Harrods division retailer, and his possession of Fulham soccer membership and the Ritz resort in Paris. With a enterprise empire encompassing delivery, property, banking, oil, retail and building, Fayed was additionally a philanthropist, whose basis helped youngsters within the UK, Thailand and Mongolia.
His present for self-invention — he added the “Al-“ prefix to his surname and a 1988 UK authorities report described his claims of rich ancestry as “utterly bogus” — led segments of the British press to dub him the “Phoney Pharoah”. Removed from being the scion of a dynasty of cotton and delivery barons he made himself out to be, Fayed was the son of a poor Alexandrian school-teacher who, after an early enterprise flogging lemonade, set out in enterprise promoting stitching machines. He later had the great luck to begin working for the arms vendor Adnan Khashoggi, who acknowledged his enterprise skills and employed him in his furnishings export enterprise in Saudi Arabia.
He grew to become an advisor to the Sultan of Brunei within the mid-Nineteen Sixties and moved to Britain within the Seventies. Fayed purchased the Ritz in 1979 along with his brother and the pair snapped up Harrods six years later after a protracted and bitter takeover battle with British businessman Roland “Tiny” Rowland. A subsequent authorities investigation into the takeover, formally printed in 1990, discovered that Fayed and his brother had been dishonest about their wealth and origins to safe the takeover. They referred to as the claims unfair. 5 years later, his first software for British citizenship was rejected. Revenge adopted swiftly.
Quickly after, Fayed advised the press that he had paid Conservative MPs to ask questions in parliament on his behalf. This introduced down two distinguished politicians, whereas Fayed additionally uncovered Cupboard minister Jonathan Aitken’s involvement in a Saudi arms deal. Aitken was later jailed for perjury and perverting the course of justice. The defining tragedy of Fayed’s life got here in August 1997: Dodi and Princess Diana died when a automotive pushed by considered one of Fayed’s staff, chauffeur Henri Paul, crashed in a Paris highway tunnel.
For years afterwards, Fayed refused to just accept the deaths had been the results of rushing and intoxication by Paul, who additionally died. The distraught Fayed accused the royal household of being behind the deaths and commissioned two memorials to the couple at Harrods. One, unveiled in 1998, was a kitsch pyramid-shaped show with images of Diana and Dodi, a wine glass presupposed to be from their closing dinner and a hoop that he claimed his son purchased for the princess. The opposite, a copper statue of the couple releasing an albatross, was entitled “Harmless Victims” — a mirrored image of his view that Dodi and Diana “had been murdered”.
Fayed’s claims in opposition to the royal household got here at a worth. Harrods misplaced a royal warrant bestowed by Prince Philip in 2000 after what Buckingham Palace referred to as “a big decline within the buying and selling relationship” between the prince and the shop. Later that 12 months, Fayed ordered the removing of all remaining royal warrants — successfully a regal seal of approval — for supplying the queen, queen mom and Prince Charles, the now King Charles III. The Institution “dislike my outspokenness and willpower to get the reality”, he mentioned, as he introduced his exile to Switzerland in 2003 due to his claims and what he mentioned was the “unfair” therapy by the hands of the tax authorities.
Fayed offered Harrods in 2010 to the funding arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund for a reported £1.5 billion ($2.2 billion), though it was as soon as reported he wished to stay there even in loss of life. He advised the Monetary Instances in 2002 that he wished his physique to be placed on show in a glass mausoleum on Harrods roof “so folks can come and go to me”. Regardless of his paranoia, secrecy and eccentricities, Fayed’s success with the status division retailer was plain.
Inside a decade of his taking on, gross sales elevated by 50 % and earnings rose from £16 million to £62 million. Different successes included at Fulham, which he remodeled from a struggling outfit into an top-flight facet. However even right here he was ridiculed and he finally offered up. He claimed in 2014 they had been relegated as a result of a large statue he had commissioned of Michael Jackson outdoors the bottom was eliminated. Critics, he mentioned characteristically, “can go to hell”. In response to Forbes record of the world’s billionaires, Fayed was price $1.9 billion in Nov 2022. – AFP
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