Al Fayed tried to control me with envelopes of cash says ex-Harrods director

Mohamed Al Fayed manipulated Harrods managers into hiding his crimes and sacking people over whom he had no control, a former director told the BBC.

Jon Brilliant, who worked in Al Fayed’s private office for 18 months, said the late entrepreneur kept stuffing him with envelopes filled with cash — a total of about $50,000 (£39,000) – tried to compromise and control him.

“He was trying to own you. Eventually, I was fired because I couldn’t be bought,” he said.

Harrods did not respond to Brilliant’s claims. The organization has previously said it was “very shocked” by the abuse allegations, adding that it was “very different from the organization owned and controlled by Al Fayed”.

Brilliant said he was “shocked” when he first heard the allegations that Al Fayed abused hundreds of women and said he “beat himself” if there was anything he should have questioned further.

He told the BBC about surveillance, sackings and a culture designed to prevent top managers from trusting or communicating with each other.

That makes it harder for them to carry out their duties as directors, exercise independent judgment and check Al Fayed’s authority, or ask questions that might reveal more to them about how he treats women.

“I can 100 per cent see how the management structure and culture was set up to cover it up, to hide it from people,” Mr Brilliant said.

Four other former directors also anonymously confirmed elements of the photo.

Mr. Brilliant is a United States citizen who joined the Company in August 2000 at the age of 36. He was hired to relaunch Harrods’ online business.

He said that shortly before his first business trip to Seattle to visit Microsoft, Al Fayed gave him a brown envelope containing $5,000 (£3,993) in notes.

After the trip, he tried to refund the full amount. He said Al Fayed refused and asked him: “Don’t you want any entertainment?”

Mr. Brilliant replied that he didn’t need it – he was too busy to go to the cinema or theater, and someone else had already paid for the dinner.

Over the next six months, he continued to receive cash before traveling on business – in the form of large denominations of pound, franc or dollar notes, depending on the destination.

At the time, three senior colleagues suggested to Mr Brilliant that Al Fayed was trying to get him to compromise.

Mr Brilliant said they told him: “He tries to get you to come back and say ‘oh I spent money on drugs or I spent money on a romp and did something I shouldn’t have done’ and then he If you want to betray him, he will use this information against you.”

He added: “I certainly know of people who… succumbed to temptation.”

Mr Brilliant continued to try to return the money until his family arrived in London and he began looking for a place to live. With Al Fayed’s consent, he used the money to purchase property.

Al Fayed had the ability to use cash envelopes as a tool of power and control. In the 1990s he caused a scandal when he paid MPs to ask questions in the House of Commons and then exposed those who had received his gifts.

Mr Brilliant believes he was not immune to Al Fayed’s widespread use of wiretapping and surveillance, which was carried out by the Harrods boss’s vast security team.

“Even if I tell you this story now, I get goosebumps and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, realizing that my phone was tapped,” he said.

Mr. Brilliant first suspected he might have been wiretapped in 2002, shortly before he was fired. He quoted from a private phone conversation with someone in the United States during a meeting following a disagreement over Fulham Football Club’s funding.

Another former Harrods director, who asked not to be named, told us that when he first moved into a property owned by Al Fayed, he was warned by one of the security team that it was bugged.

The director said he and his wife would jokingly say “good morning” to the security guard, who might hear his voice when they woke up.

He noticed that many directors kept a personal mobile phone in addition to their work phone because they feared Harrods’ phones could be tapped.

Brilliant, who has returned to the United States, said he was “shocked” when he first heard about the BBC investigation.

“I do look back and say, ‘Should I have seen something? Did I miss something? I’ve talked about it over and over again,” he said.

He works in Al Fayed’s “ring of steel” office suite on the fifth floor of Harrods, which is protected by two sets of security doors. He said there was a group of administrative assistants who were all young, blond and attractive.

They were “very obedient,” Mr. Brilliant recalled. He explained: “There’s this idea of: ‘Do this, jump, how high should I jump?’ – and really being on top of it. Mohammed needs a lot of people, and they’re doing their job.”

He added that he now questions whether the women did so because of what might have happened.

Asked if he should do more to protect women, he said he asked himself if he could.

“I didn’t know that much information that would have pointed to something deeper.”

Mr Brilliant said Harrods managers were inherently at odds with each other and then wanted to be wary of their rivals.

In addition to his core responsibilities, he also partially oversees a range of Al Fayed’s interests, including Fulham Football Club and the Ritz Hotel in Paris.

“I was asked to supervise people that I had no authority to supervise,” Mr. Brilliant said. In turn, he discovered “people were watching me.”

Information is seen as a “currency” and people rush to share it to “curry favor” with their bosses, he said.

This was confirmed by a director who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There’s no trust between directors,” he told us. “Everyone is on the defensive.”

In his 1997 biography of Al Fayed, journalist Tom Bower described Harrods as a “medieval court” on which executives depended for their survival for “absolute loyalty” and “some obscene gossip to sow doubts about competitors.”

Senior managers at Harrods were sacked so frequently that Mr Brilliant said it was a “joke” in the store.

Managers were sacked or resigned so frequently that the Sunday Times began publishing the figures regularly, with the number reaching 48 in 2005 before a legal letter later blocked the figure.

Many dismissals end in legal proceedings or employment tribunals. Some were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), but Mr Brilliant failed to do so.

But some managers’ tenure lasts more than ten years. To do that, Mr. Brilliant said, you have to have a “frontal lobotomy.”

He feels some people are being compromised and have no voice. For others, “I think you have to do what you’re told to do, do it with a smile… no original ideas, no willingness to challenge the status quo, just a willingness to accept it.”

The BBC tried to contact as many long-serving former Harrods directors as possible but no one wanted to be interviewed.

Although he has only worked there for 18 months, Mr Brilliant said he wanted to be interviewed by the BBC for two reasons.

“Number one, if there’s anything I can say or do to show support for these women who have suffered horrific treatment and trauma, I want to do whatever I can.

“Secondly, I hope that through my willingness to speak out, others will also speak out.”

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