Mohamed al-Fayed - latest: Harrods boss ruled over ‘toxic and abusive’ culture, says US lawyer Gloria Allred

We’ll be using this blog to bring you the latest updates as the legal team involved in the investigation into claims of rape by late Harrods owner Mohammad Al Fayed hold a press conference.

A new sex assault claim has been made against Mohamed Al Fayed after an investigation into the late Harrods owner was published.

The woman believes police nearly arrested him over her allegations just days before he died in August 2023, she told the BBC.

More than 20 female former employees have spoken to the broadcaster as part of a special investigation, coming forward with allegations of assault and physical violence, with incidents said to have happened in London, Paris, St Tropez and Abu Dhabi.

Five women alleged they had been raped by Fayed, who died last year at the age of 94. The BBC alleged Harrods not only failed to intervene but helped cover up the allegations of abuse.

You can read more in this report:

At a press conference due to start at 10am, a legal team involved in the investigation against Mohammad Al Fayed is expected to share more details about a claim against the luxury department store for allegedly failing to provide a safe system of work for its employees.

After the publication of the investigation on Thursday, a woman who the BBC is calling Melanie came forward to say she had been subjected to a “sickening” sexual assault by the Egyptian billionaire.

Following the new allegation, Harrods’ current owners said they stood by a statement issued on Thursday which said they were “utterly appalled” by the allegations of abuse.

It said Fayed was “intent on abusing his power wherever he operated” and accepted it had “failed” employees in its lack of response.

The department store has also set up a page on its website inviting former employees to come forward if they have any allegations.

The press conference is now under way.

Dean Armstrong KC has said that, in “many years of practice”, he has “never seen a case as horrific as this”.

He said it “combines some of the most horrific elements of case involving Jimmy Saville, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein”.

“Saville because the institution knew about the behaviour, Epstein because there was a procurement system in palace to source the women and girls for abuse, Weinstein because it was a person at the very top who was abusing his power,” he said.

Bruce Drummond KC told the press conference: “This is one of the worst cases of corporate sexual exploitation that certainly I and perhaps the world has ever seen.

“It was absolutely horrific. I cannot stress that word enough – it was horrific. It’s horrific because the acts carried out against these young women and girls – and I say girls, because most of them were only 19 to 24 at the time, and some were as young as 15 and 16.

“It’s horrific, because the system – and it was the system – that procured them was enabling the abuse of these young women. And it’s horrific because the effects that this sexual abuse and Harrods’ institutional betrayal has had on our clients.

“These effects have lasted years, and in some instances, for decades. And even continue to this day.”

Harrods has set up a page on its website inviting former employees to come forward if they have any allegations.

Women would be sent for a ‘private medical examination’ by 3 or 4 doctors after being selected by recruitment team, said barrister Maria Mulla.

This would involve a full body screening, sometimes including a cervical smear and an ovary check.

These checks would be done for roles as Al-Fayed’s secretary, personal assistant, or even interior designer.

Al-Fayed would make “degrading and humiliating comments personally about what he had been told at their medical examination”.

Former Harrods employees claim their gynaecological test results were sent directly to the department store’s ex-owner Mohamed Al Fayed, my colleague Holly Patrick reports.

Speaking in the BBC documentary Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods, the former staff members claimed they were told to undergo medical checkups — including an internal sexual health test — as “an extra perk of the job” and because Al Fayed’s son Dodi “had a low immune system”.

One woman claimed she had a smear test and a doctor checked her ovaries.

“My results were sent directly to the chairman so quickly that by the time I had got back to my desk, he knew the results,” she alleged.

One employee was sexually assaulted and raised this in a formal written complaint to Harrods.

The head of security, John Mcnamara, allegedly said: “You are a girl alone in London, someone could jump out the bushes at you, or you could have a sudden accident. You need to deny what you have said in the first letter with a second letter, which you must drop off before noon.”

She did as she was told out of fear, Ms Mulla said.

Another woman was told she had been “disloyal” to the chairman, and she had to leave immediately.

If she spoke to press, she was told “in explicit terms that there would be serious consequences”, it was alleged.

She was subjected to threats, became mentally ill, suicidal, and admitted to psychiatric hospital for 6 months of her life. She was also left unable to create relationships with other men, losing out on the opportunity to have her own family, lawyers said.