Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, the former owner of Harrods department store and the father of Dodi Fayed, who died with Princess Diana in a car crash in 1997, died Friday in London. He was 94.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1929. He moved to the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s and made his fortune in the business world. He married Samira Khashoggi in 1954 and they had one son, Emad, known as Dodi. The couple divorced in 1956.
Al-Fayed is best known for his ownership of Harrods, which he bought in 1985 and sold to Qatar in 2010 for $2.4bn. He also owned the Ritz Paris Hotel and Fulham Football Club.
In 2013, Al Fayed sold Fulham Football Club to US auto parts billionaire Shahid Khan for a reported $300m.
Al-Fayed was a controversial figure. He was known for his lavish lifestyle and his outspoken views. He was also a vocal critic of the British royal family, believing that they were involved in the deaths of his son Dodi and Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
Mohamed Al-Fayed believed the couple were killed intentionally “because they still don’t accept that Dodi, my son, an Egyptian, a Muslim, can be the stepfather of the future king,” he said in a 60 Minutes Australia interview.
Al-Fayed was also a generous philanthropist. He donated millions of pounds to charities in the UK and Egypt.
