Throughout his career, Egyptian millionaire Mohamed al-Fayed accumulated a number of notable assets, such as the Ritz hotel in Paris and the Harrods department store in London.
His conflicts with the British elite were also well known, and they worsened after his son Dodi and Princess Diana of Wales died in a car accident in 1997.
The documentary claims Al-Fayed can “burst into tears” when he thinks of his son Dodi, who died in the same car crash that killed Princess Diana.
The ex-Fayed’s spokeswoman, Laurie Mayer, explained how the millionaire believed his son and Diana were ‘murdered’ and launched his own private investigation into the car crash in Paris in an interview for the second part of Investigating Diana: Death in Paris.
Mohammad Al Fayed
Mohamed Al-Fayed is still alive: where is he now?
The 93-year-old billionaire is active and lives with his wife, Heini, in general.
Fayed expanded his holdings and added the prefix “al-” to his name after moving to Britain in 1974, buying the Ritz Hotel in Paris (1979).
The tumultuous relationship between Fayed and the British establishment is well documented.
In a brutal takeover in 1985, he challenged mining conglomerate Lonrho to buy the House of Fraser, the holding company that ran the Harrods department store.
Lonrho owner Roland “Tiny” Rowland persuaded authorities to accuse Fayed of lying about his ability to finance the transaction.
His wife Heini Wathén is a 67-year-old former model
Heini Wathen-Fayed and Mohamed Al-Fayed have been married for over 35 years. She was once a model and is believed to be 67.
She also raised four of the children who belonged to the former owner of Fulham FC. The couple, who are believed to be wealthy and worth over £1.2billion, are believed to own a variety of lavish homes around the world.
Wathen-Fayed says she is contesting the lawsuit to preserve the “quiet” 12-acre setting and prevent development of the neighborhood environment.
She also brought an action in the High Court to stop the development of a major cremation site which would be built around half a mile from their luxurious Surrey home.
Heini Wathen-Fayed, 67, has sued over plans to erect a huge funeral parlor near their £4.6million 17th century Oxted mansion. The complaint relates to green belt land use plans.
The Egyptian billionaire’s net worth in 2022: $1.9 billion
With an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion, Mohamed Al Fayed is one of the richest Arabs in the world, according to Forbes.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, the 93-year-old immigrated to the UK in the mid-1960s and made his fortune there.
Most notably, he was the former owner of Harrod’s in London, which he sold to Qatar in 2010 for an estimated $2.4 billion.
He is the owner of the legendary Ritz Paris, which reopened in 2016 after a four-year renovation. The suites are named after notable guests, including Coco Chanel.
Al Fayed reportedly paid $300 million to buy Fulham Football Club in 2013 from Shahid Khan, an American auto parts tycoon.
Heini Wathen-Fayed with Mohamed Al Fayed
Dodi Fayed Father: Conspiracy Theories Behind Princess Daina’s Death
At the time of their deaths in a car crash in Paris, France on August 31, 1997, Al-Fayed’s son Dodi was romantically involved with Diana, Princess of Wales.
On the day she was featured in the special Investigating Diana: Death in Paris, the former Harrods boss displayed a statue honoring Diana and Dodi in his stunning Knightsbridge department store.
Al-Fayed said in a statement to media crews at the time: “It is a sad day for me.
According to Mr. Mayer, “[Mohamed Al-Fayed] he himself had long desired acceptance, and that acceptance had come with the bond between Dodi and Diana.
The billionaire’s investigation into the 1997 fatal car crash was the focus of the episode in order to find out more about what happened to Diana and Dodi.
As his former supervisor believed his son had been the victim of a “murder”, Mr Mayer claims his former boss tried to bolster his own assumption.
In his opinion, there was no doubt that it was an assassination, he insisted. French investigators ignored Fayed’s argument, but called it a “conspiracy” nonetheless.
Mohammad Al Fayed
Mohamed Al-Fayed, businessman of Egyptian origin, born on January 27, 1929, has lived in the United Kingdom since the end of the 1960s and concentrates his professional activities there. The Ritz Paris Hotel, a former Harrods department store, and Fulham FC, both in London, are among the companies owned by Fayed.
Dodi, Fayed’s son from his first marriage to Samira Khashoggi, which lasted from 1954 to 1956, was dating Diana, Princess of Wales, when they both perished in a car crash in Paris in 1997. to have four children, Jasmine, Karim, Camilla and Omar – with Heini Wathén, a Finnish socialite and former model, Fayed also married her in 1985. Fayed’s wealth was ranked 1,031st in the world in 2013 with an estimated worth at US$1.4 billion.
| Born | January 27, 1929
Alexandria, Kingdom of Egypt |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Egyptian |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | 5, including Dodi and Omar |
Early life
He was the eldest son of an Egyptian primary school teacher and was born in Roshdy, located in Alexandria, Egypt. The year of his birth has been questioned. It has already been stated on alfayed.com that he was born in 1933; however, the Department of Commerce discovered that his actual year of birth was 1929. In 2011, “1933” was changed to “1929” on the alfayed.com website. Ali, Salah, Soaad and Safia are Fayed’s offspring and siblings, and he has a total of five children. Ali and Salah worked alongside him in the business.
Samira Khashoggi was his wife for the duration of their marriage, which lasted from 1954 to 1956. Fayed collaborated on projects with Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi arms dealer and businessman. Khashoggi was the brother of Fayed’s wife.
He began referring to himself as “Al-Fayed” rather than “Fayed” sometime in the early 1970s. When they purchased the House of Fraser in the 1980s, his brothers Ali and Salah began to follow suit. However, by the late 1980s, both had gone back to simply calling themselves “Fayed”. Although “Al-” does not have the same social connotations in Arabic as “de” or “von”, some people have speculated that the reason Fayed added “Al-” to his name was to imply that he came from an aristocratic family, similar to how “de” or “von” do in French and German. Because of this presumption, Private Eye magazine dubbed him the “phony pharaoh”.
UK
First business relationships
In Egypt, Fayed and his brothers established a shipping company, which later moved its main operations to Genoa, Italy, with other locations in London. Around 1964, Fayed developed a close relationship with François Duvalier, also known as “Papa Doc”, the ruler of Haiti, and became interested in building a Fayed-Duvalier oil refinery in that country. . Besides that, he had a relationship with geologist George de Mohrenschildt. Six months later, Fayed decided to cut short his stay in Haiti after discovering that a sample of “crude oil” delivered by his associates in Haiti was actually poor quality molasses.
After that, Fayed moved to England, where he settled in the heart of London. In the mid-1960s, Fayed met Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai. Sheikh Rashid entrusted Fayed with the task of assisting in the transformation of Dubai, and in 1968 Fayed established IMS (International Marine Services). In order to carry out the necessary construction work in the emirate, Fayed invited British companies such as Costain Group, Bernard Sunley & Sons and Taylor Woodrow. Fayed eventually became a director of the Costain group and a 30% shareholder in the company. In 1966, he also assumed the role of financial adviser to Omar Ali Saifuddien III, then Sultan of Brunei.
In 1975, Fayed was briefly a member of the board of mining giant Lonrho, but he left the company after a disagreement. In 1979, he spent $30 million to acquire the Ritz Hotel, located in Paris, France.
In 1984, Fayed and his brothers purchased a thirty percent investment in House of Fraser from Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland, the head of Lonrho. House of Fraser was a conglomerate that included the famous London department store Harrods. In 1985 he and his brothers paid a total of £615m to acquire the remaining 70% of House of Fraser. Rowland claimed the Fayed brothers lied about their history and fortunes, and he pressured the government to look into their claims. An investigation into the Fayeds has been opened by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The subsequent DTI investigation was damning, but the Fayeds were not punished in any way. Moreover, despite the fact that many people believed the study’s findings, others believed that it was politically motivated.
In 1998 Rowland accused Fayed of taking items from his safe at Harrods which included diamonds and documents. Fayed was taken into custody, but the allegations against him were ultimately dismissed. Rowland died in 1998. The disagreement was resolved by Fayed with a payment made to his widow. In 2002, Fayed sued the Metropolitan Police for false arrest, but he failed in his legal action.
House of Fraser went public in 1994, while Mohammed Fayed continued to hold private ownership of Harrods. He reintroduced the satirical magazine Punch in 1996, but it went out of business again in 2002. Al-Fayed applied for UK citizenship twice, first in 1994 and once in 1999, but none of these attempts succeeded. It has been speculated that Fayed’s dispute with Rowland was one of the factors that led to the initial refusal of his application for British citizenship.
