British lawyer Dean Armstrong said more than 400 women have so far contacted the legal team working on the case against the late Egyptian billionaire Mohamed al-Fayed, who was accused of sexual harassment and rape.
“The scale of abuses committed by al-Fayed and facilitated by those close to him unfortunately continues to grow,” lawyer Dean Armstrong said at a news conference in London. Another lawyer working on the case, Bruce Drummond, said that more than 400 reports were submitted by women from all over the world, mainly from Great Britain, but also from the United States. AustraliaMalaysia, Spain, South Africa and other countries.
“We believe this is an abuse on a massive scale,” Drummond said. He noted that the crimes took place within the walls of al-Fayed's luxury London department store Harrods, but also at other locations linked to his business empire, such as the headquarters of Fulham Football Club, the Ritz hotel in Paris and his estate in Surrey.
Harrods is a luxury London department storeNEIL HALL/PAP/EPA
Drummond revealed that the former ambassador's daughter was among the businessman's victims USA in Great Britain and the daughter of a famous footballer, but he did not provide any names.
Deceased billionaire accused of sexual crimes
The case of the Egyptian billionaire became public again in September, when the BBC broadcast a documentary presenting the testimony of over 20 former Harrods employees.
They said that al-Fayed, who died last year at the age of 94, sexually assaulted them, with five of them talking about rape. Since then, the case has become more and more controversial.
Mohamed Al Fayed placed a statue of Michael Jackson in front of Fulham FC's headquarters PAP/EPA
After the documentary was broadcast, the British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) admitted that it had not brought charges against al-Fayed twice in the past, even though it had received materials from the police about his sexual crimes. In 2009, when no charges were brought against al-Fayed for the first time, the current British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, headed the CPS.
Who was Mohamed al-Fayed
Born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, al-Fayed began his entrepreneurial career selling soda and then worked as a sewing machine salesman. He built his fortune in real estate, shipping and construction, first in the Middle East and then in Europe.
The last years of al-Fayed's life were spent mainly trying to prove that the death of his son Dodi and Princess Diana in a car accident in Paris in 1997 was not an accident, but that it was a deliberately orchestrated conspiracy. The inquest into Diana's death found no evidence to support this claim.
Al-Fayed owned Harrods from 1985 to 2010, when he sold it for around £1.5 billion to a wealth fund belonging to the ruling family of Qatar.