More than 400 allegations of sexual misconduct have been made against the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed – but survivors say the full picture of abuse will remain hidden unless the Metropolitan police launch a trafficking investigation. The calls come from No One Above (NOA), a collective founded by victims of abuse at the hands of the billionaire, who died in 2023 aged 94 without facing any charges. They want the Met to broaden its existing inquiry, Operation Cornpoppy, and make trafficking the primary focus, arguing that this would allow police to examine the wider network, recruitment chains, financial flows and institutional complicity rather than individual cases.
Lawyers representing the Justice for Harrods Survivors group say 421 people have come forward about abuse that allegedly took place at Harrods, the Ritz hotel in Paris, Fulham FC and other places owned by Fayed. The allegations span 1977 to 2014 and include rape, sexual assault, human trafficking, false imprisonment, drugging, physical violence and forced abortions. The Metropolitan Police are investigating 155 victims who have contacted the force directly, 21 of whom came forward before Fayed’s death. Four people have been questioned to date, 18 months after the investigation opened. A Met spokesperson said the force is determined to “bring anyone who is suspected to have played a part in Mohamed Al Fayed’s offending to justice”. But NOA argues that the Met should focus primarily on trafficking to ensure a wider international network of people who enabled the abuse are also investigated.
“Survivors of Mohamed Al Fayed urge trafficking probe as 400+ abuse allegations emerge.”
The group has urged the National Crime Agency to set up a joint investigation team (Jit) to run in parallel with the Met’s work and have oversight of it. This would enable police and prosecutors from other countries to work with UK investigators. Survivors say an extra layer of accountability and transparency is “crucial” given concerns over the Met’s own conduct in this case. In May, some MPs raised concerns about the way police had handled previous and current allegations of abuse by Fayed. The all-party parliamentary group for the survivors of Fayed and Harrods told the BBC: “Survivors of Mohamed Fayed have waited years, and in many cases decades, for the police to investigate allegations against him. Understandably, many fear that his enablers will never be brought to justice.”
Justine, not her real name, worked at Harrods for more than three years in the 1990s when she was 22. She said she was trafficked and abused by Fayed, and told the Press Association that her experience “followed a now familiar pattern of selection, isolation, grooming, manipulation, coercion, transportation, abuse, intimidation, and then surveillance and threat. It was horrific.”