About our Mohamed Al Fayed news
Latest news on Mohamed Al Fayed, an Egyptian businessman who owned Fulham FC from 1997 to 2013 and who acquired a number of prestigious holdings throughout his career, including the Ritz Hotel in Paris and Harrods department store in London.
He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on 27 January 1929, the eldest son of a primary school teacher. He started his own shipping company in Egypt before moving to Italy and then to the UK in the 1970s.
Mohamed Al Fayed became an adviser to the Sultan of Brunei and joined the board of Lonrho, a mining conglomerate. He bought the Paris Ritz Hotel with his brother Ali in 1979 and Harrods in 1985.
He was married twice: first to Samira Khashoggi, the sister of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, from 1954 to 1956, and then to Heini Wathén, a Finnish socialite and former model, from 1985 until his death. He had five children: Dodi, Jasmine, Karim, Camilla, and Omar.
His eldest son, Dodi, died in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997, along with Diana, Princess of Wales. Al Fayed claimed that the crash was not an accident but a conspiracy orchestrated by the British security services. However, French and British investigations concluded that it was caused by speeding and the driver's intoxication.
Mohamed Al Fayed was involved in the cash-for-questions scandal in 1994, which exposed three Conservative politicians who had accepted bribes from him to ask questions in parliament. He also had a long-running feud with the British establishment over his citizenship application, which was repeatedly rejected.
Mohamed Al Fayed died on 1 September 2023 at the age of 94 in London. His death was announced by his family and confirmed by Fulham FC. He was buried at London Central Mosque later that day.