From 1995 onwards, Fayed was the subject of media scrutiny and investigations into allegations of sexist and discriminatory practices he mandated at Harrods, of sexual harassment and assault.

[11] Following Egyptian President Nassar's threats to expropropriate foreign businesses, Al-Fayed was able to take control of a small shipping company, owned by Leon Carasso, who wished to emigrate.

[18] Al-Fayed promised to use his connections in Dubai to help bring investment to the Caribbean island, if they allowed him to build an oil refinery, and develop the wharf at Port-au-Prince.

[23] With his earnings from commissions on various projects in Dubai, Al-Fayed bought a Rolls-Royce, a large chalet in Gstaad, and the remaining apartments of 60 Park Lane in Mayfair, where he had been living for the past few years.

[25] Al-Fayed soon became alarmed at Rowland's use of Lonrho's money to fund his lifestyle and to pay large bribes in Africa, as well as his syphoning off company profits into a secret bank account in Switzerland.

[27] Tajir's influence in Dubai was waning by 1977, and Al-Fayed was excluded from the commission process for a new aluminium smelter, and the development of Jebel Ali, putting Costain's future profits at risk.

[33] Fayed introduced British companies including the Costain Group (of which he became a director and 30% shareholder[34]), Bernard Sunley & Sons, and Taylor Woodrow to the emirate to carry out construction work.

[34] Al-Fayed told Maureen Orth that he had known Hassanal Bolkiah, who succeeded Saifuddien on his abdication, since the sultan's childhood and that they had met during the building of a trade centre in Brunei.

[17] Al-Fayed accompanied the sultan to 10 Downing Street to visit Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in January 1985, with sterling in decline and threatening the economy.

[52] After Vanity Fair published Maureen Orth's article "Holy War at Harrods",[53] Al-Fayed sued the American magazine for libel in September 1995 but withdrew his suit in 1997.

It saw Conservative MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith leave the government in disgrace, and a Committee on Standards in Public Life established to prevent such corruption occurring again.

Hamilton's libel action related to a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary broadcast on 16 January 1997[59] in which Al-Fayed stated that the MP had received up to £110,000 in cash and other gratuities for asking parliamentary questions.

[62] In 1984, Al-Fayed and his brother Ali, purchased a 30 per cent stake for £138 million[17] in the House of Fraser, a group that included the Knightsbridge department store Harrods, from Tiny Rowland, the head of Lonrho.

Lonrho had been pursuing control of the House of Fraser since 1977, and had been prevented from acquiring the company by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in a 1981 ruling, although its purchase of The Observer was approved.

"[63] Rowland felt his shareholders had been cheated as he believed Al-Fayed had used a power of attorney that he held for the Sultan of Brunei, then the richest man in the world, to fund the purchase.

The DTI report came to very different conclusions about the scale of their wealth, stating that; If people had known, for instance, that they only owned one luxury hotel; that their interests in oil exploration consortia were of no current value; that their banking interests consisted of less than 5 percent of the issued share capital of a bank and were worth less than $10 million; that they had no current interests in construction projects: that far from being 'leading shipowners in the liner trade' they only owned two roll-on roll-off 1600 ton cargo ferries; if all these facts had been known people would have been less disposed to believe that the Al-Fayeds really owned the money they were using to buy HOF (House of Fraser)1988 DTI report into the background of the Fayed brothers[17] In March 1985 the Al-Fayeds announced a formal cash offer for House of Fraser of £615 million, which Kleinwort claimed was untethered by any borrowings.

[63] Illicit bugging devices were used and some of the money went in bribes to officials to unearth incriminating documents in Egypt, Haiti, Dubai, Brunei, France and Switzerland, allegedly proving fraudulent dealings by Al-Fayed and showing his humble origins and limited net worth.

[63] The DTI report said that the Al-Fayed brothers had 'dishonestly represented their origins, their wealth, their business interests and their resources to the Secretary of State, to the Office of Fair Trading, to the House of Fraser board and shareholders, and their own advisers' [64] Rowland and the Lohnro group had previously been strongly criticised by a 1976 DTI report, and had been described by Prime Minister Edward Heath as "an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism".

[17] In 1994 Harrods settled five racial-discrimination cases brought against the company, and, according to trade union officials, between June and September 1994, 23 of the 28 staff fired were black people, who had held mostly menial jobs.

[94][95] In 2011 Mohamed Al-Fayed's daughter Camilla, who had worked as an ambassador for the charity for eight years,[96] opened the newly refurbished Zoe's Place baby hospice in West Derby, Liverpool.

[116] The chairman of Liberty Publishing was Stewart Steven, the former editor of the Evening Standard, with John Dux the chief executive, a former managing director of News International.

[117] Steven dined with Hugo Young, chairman of the Scott Trust at the Garrick Club, and offered a cheque for £17 million from Al-Fayed for The Observer newspaper.

[122] In the early 1970s Al-Fayed purchased the Castle St. Therese in the Parc de St Tropez on the French Riviera,[123] a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland,[24] and Barrow Green Court and farm, near Oxted, Surrey.

[155] Journalist Dominic Lawson wrote in The Independent in 2008 that Al-Fayed sought to concoct "a conspiracy to cover up the true circumstances" of fatalities caused by the crash "involving an intoxicated and over-excited driver (an employee of Mohamed Fayed's Paris Ritz)".

[161] Michael Howard, the Conservative home secretary, asked for the decision to be reviewed, fearing renewed embarrassment over his connections with alleged fraudster Harry Landy, which surfaced during the DTI investigation.

[182] In "Holy War at Harrods", a 1995 profile of Al-Fayed for Vanity Fair, Maureen Orth described how, according to former employees, "Fayed regularly walked the store on the lookout for young, attractive women to work in his office.

Those who rebuffed him would often be subjected to crude, humiliating comments about their appearance or dress... A dozen ex-employees I spoke with said that Fayed would chase secretaries around the office and sometimes try to stuff money down women's blouses".

[183] In December 1997, the ITV current affairs programme The Big Story broadcast testimonies from former Harrods employees who spoke of how Al-Fayed routinely sexually harassed women in similar ways.

[192][193] In September 2024, it has been reported that Kristina Svensson, who worked at Ritz hotel, will be the first victim to file a complaint against Mohamed Al Fayed in France, while previously the focus was on London.

On the same day, Harrods's managing director, Michael Ward, said Al Fayed "presided over a toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation, fear of repercussion and sexual misconduct".