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

Mohamed Al Fayed manipulated Harrods managers to conceal his crimes, sacking those he could not control, an ex-director has told the BBC.

Jon Brilliant, who worked in Al Fayed’s private office for 18 months, says the late entrepreneur plied him with envelopes full of cash – totalling about $50,000 (£39,000) – to try to compromise and control him.

“He tried to own you. And ultimately, I got fired because I couldn’t be bought,” he says.

Harrods didn’t respond to Mr Brilliant’s claims. It has previously said that it was “utterly appalled” by the abuse allegations, adding that it is a “very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Al Fayed”.

Mr Brilliant says he was “horrified” when he first heard the allegations that Al Fayed had abused hundreds of women and says he “beat himself up” about whether there was anything he should have questioned more.

He told the BBC about surveillance, sackings, and a culture designed to keep top managers from trusting or communicating with one another.

This made it harder for them to do their duty as directors to exercise independent judgement and check Al Fayed’s power – or ask questions which may have revealed more to them about how he was treating women.

“I 100% can see how the management structure and culture was set up to cover it up, mask it from people,” says Mr Brilliant.

Four other former directors have anonymously confirmed elements of this picture.

A US citizen, Mr Brilliant was 36 when he joined the firm in August 2000. He was hired to relaunch the Harrods online business.

He says that shortly before his first business trip to visit Microsoft in Seattle, Al Fayed gave him a brown envelope containing $5,000 (£3,993) in $50 notes.

After the trip he tried to return the full amount. He says Al Fayed refused, asking him, “You didn’t need any entertainment?”

Mr Brilliant replied that he did not need it – he had been too busy to visit the cinema or theatre, and someone else had paid for dinner.

Receiving cash ahead of business trips – large-value notes of pounds, francs or dollars depending on his destination – continued over the following six months.

Three senior colleagues suggested to Mr Brilliant at the time that Al Fayed was trying to get him to compromise himself.

Mr Brilliant says they told him: “He was trying to get you to come back and say ‘oh, I spent money on drugs or I spent money frolicking, doing something that I shouldn’t have been doing,’ and that he would then use that information against you if you should ever turn on him.”

He adds: “I am certainly aware of people who… succumbed to the temptation.”

Mr Brilliant continued trying to return the money, until his family arrived in London and he started looking for a home. With Al Fayed’s consent, he put it towards the purchase of a property.

Al Fayed had form for using envelopes of cash as a tool of power and control. It had caused a scandal in the 1990s after he paid MPs to ask questions in the House of Commons – and then exposed those who had accepted his gifts.

Mr Brilliant believes he was not immune to Al Fayed’s extensive use of bugging and surveillance, carried out by the Harrods owner’s large team of security guards.

“Even when I tell this story to you right now, I get kind of goosebumps and the hair stands up on the back of my neck, realising that my phones were being listened in on,” he says.

Mr Brilliant’s first suspicion that he may have been bugged came in 2002, shortly before he was fired. After a disagreement about the funding of Fulham FC, words from a private phone conversation with someone in the US were quoted back to him in a meeting.

Another former Harrods director, who wanted to remain anonymous, told us he had moved into an Al Fayed-owned property when he started at the store and one of the security team warned him it was bugged.

The director says he and his wife would jokingly say “good morning” to the security guards who might be listening when they woke up.

He noticed that many directors kept a personal mobile phone as well as a work phone, because they feared the Harrods phone might be bugged.

Mr Brilliant, who has returned to the US, says he was “dumbfounded” when he first heard the BBC investigation.

“I do look back and say, ‘should I have seen something? Did I miss something?’ And I’ve gone over it and over it,” he says.

He worked in Al Fayed’s “ring of steel” office suite on the fifth floor of Harrods, protected by two sets of security doors. There was a group of administrative assistants who were all young, blonde and attractive – he says.

Mr Brilliant recalls them as “obedient”. He explains: “There was this notion of ‘do this, jump, how high should I jump?’ – and really being on the ball. Mohamed demanded a lot of people, and they were serving their role.”

He adds that he now questions whether the women acted in that way because of what may had been happening.

When challenged on whether he should have done more to protect the women he says he asks himself whether he could have.

“I wasn’t privy to that amount of information that would otherwise suggest that there was something deeper going on.”

Mr Brilliant says Harrods’ managers were set in opposition to each other and then expected to keep a watchful eye on their rivals.

In addition to his core role, he was given partial oversight of a range of Al Fayed’s interests, including Fulham FC and the Paris Ritz.

“I was asked to oversee people I had no right overseeing,” says Mr Brilliant. In turn, he found that “people were looking over my shoulder”.

Information was treated like a “currency” and people would jockey to share it to “curry favour” with the boss, he says.

This has been corroborated by an anonymous director. “There was no trust between directors,” he told us. “Everyone was on the defensive.”

In his 1997 biography of Al Fayed, journalist Tom Bower described Harrods as a “medieval court” where executives’ survival depended on “utter loyalty” and “a drip of salacious gossip to sow doubts about rivals”.

Senior managers at Harrods were sacked with such regularity that Mr Brilliant says it was a “running joke” in the store.

Managers were sacked or quit so frequently that The Sunday Times began to publish a regular count, which reached 48 in 2005 – before a legal letter put a stop to it.

Many dismissals ended in legal action or employment tribunals. Some were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), although Mr Brilliant was not.

But some managers lasted for more than a decade. And to do that, you had to have a “frontal lobotomy” said Mr Brilliant.

Some, he felt, were compromised and couldn’t speak out. For the others, “I think you had to just do what you were told to do, do it with a smile… No original thought, no willing to challenge the status quo, just willing to accept.”

The BBC has tried to contact as many long-serving former Harrods directors as possible, but none were willing to give an interview.

Although he only worked there for 18 months, Mr Brilliant said he wanted to speak to the BBC for two reasons.

“One, if there’s anything that I’m able to say or do that shows support for these women who have been horrifically treated, traumatised, I want to do whatever I can.

“Secondly, my hope is that by my willingness to speak out, others will come and speak out themselves.”

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