A former Scotland Yard chief superintendent claims Mohamed Al Fayed’s Harrods store’s close relationship with the Met Police ‘felt corrupt’.
Stephen Otter alleges he was told by another officer in 1999 that the ‘special relationship’ with the department store ‘benefits both us and them’.
He told Sky News of a culture where officers were given hampers and had ‘lots of drinks paid for’ them after providing ‘additional resources’ at Christmas.
But the security boss at Harrods started making ‘quite a lot of complaints’ about cops coming ‘in here again, asking for freebies’.
Asked if he felt the Met Police officers were corrupt, Mr Otter said: ‘I think they probably were.’
Disgraced businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed can be seen grinning from behind the wheel of a blue and white police marked Rover that Harrods sponsored
Former Scotland Yard chief superintendent Stephen Otter said he tried to return the car but was told by a security boss this ‘arrangement’ had ‘been going on for a long time’
Mr Otter tried to return the police car that had been sponsored by Harrods but was told by the security boss this ‘arrangement’ had ‘been going on for a long time’ and: ‘When you’ve been here a bit longer, you will have a better understanding of this relationship.’
He later conducted a review when he became borough commander for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and found policing at the luxury store was like a Premier League game.
‘The risk just literally didn’t support the resources and the attention they got,’ he said.
Mr Otter also raised fears that the relationship with Harrods would have played a ‘very negative part’ in police investigations into allegations about Al Fayed.
He added: ‘I just felt deeply uncomfortable with the relationship. It was a relationship in which this department store had huge amounts of power over the leaders of the areas of policing around them.
‘It felt like a corrupt relationship on both sides.’
The Metropolitan Police declined to comment when approached by Sky News.
A spokesperson said: ‘Given the length of time since the events… we aren’t able to provide a response.’
MailOnline revealed last week that Al Fayed sponsored a Metropolitan Police car a year after he was publicly accused of raping and sexually assaulting dozens of women, MailOnline can reveal.
Asked if he felt the Met Police officers were corrupt, Mr Otter (pictured) said: ‘I think they probably were’
Mohamed Al Fayed dons a Victoria emerald and diamond tiara as he launches Harrods’ New Year sale in 2001
In pictures likely to cause major embarrassment to Scotland Yard, the depraved billionaire grins from behind the wheel of the blue and white marked Rover wearing a police-issue peaked cap.
The driver’s door bears the inscription, ‘This car is sponsored by Harrods’, in the store’s distinctive script.
MailOnline discovered the long-forgotten photos days after a BBC documentary showed the Egyptian-born businessman and TV star to be a prolific sexual predator who for more than three decades used wealth and status to abuse girls and women on his payroll.
More than 20 told the Corporation how he’d assaulted them, with four saying they’d been raped.
It comes as a former Metropolitan Police officer who was recruited to work as a Harrods security guard reveals the uncomfortably close relationship Fayed had with law enforcement.
Deborah Bull, 64, said: ‘I would say the car would be sat outside Harrods most days and the officers in the vehicle would come into security or the store. I saw them on a couple of occasions having a cup of tea in the security office.
‘If it wasn’t his idea Al-Fayed was certainly on in, his head of security John MacNamara was an ex-Met copper and they would’ve laughed at something like this.’
In a statement during the 1996 publicity stunt, Fayed said he was gifting the vehicle because ‘we all have a stake in making our city a safer and better place’.
Two years before the picture was taken, MacNamara, dubbed ‘Mac the Knife’ – a former Met Superintendant – allegedly had a woman arrested after learning she planned to accuse Fayed of sexual assault at a tribunal.
MacNamara was allegedly at the heart of Al Fayed’s chilling campaign to silence his victims.
He was described by one former Harrods colleague as a ‘nasty piece of work’.
The ex-security guard told the BBC: ‘He would threaten people and use his power as an ex-copper. I know for a fact MacNamara knocked on someone’s door personally and threatened a girl.’
Deborah Bull, 64, was a member of Harrods’ ‘Green Team’ between 1996 and 1997
Mohamed Al Fayed is accused of raping multiple women during his time as Harrods owner from 1984 to 2010
Mohamed Al Fayed with the Queen in 1997. His business connections and charity work saw him mixing with high society despite his complaints about what he saw as establishment bias
In 1995 – a year before Fayed bought the police a car – Vanity Fair published an article alleging racism, staff surveillance and sexual misconduct by him against Harrods staff.
Deborah told MailOnline that she first started working at the department store in 1996 after she was headhunted by a security recruitment firm.
She said: ‘I was approached by a recruitment agency called Met Shield, which are ex police officers that recruit that sort of work. They approached me and said: ‘look, we think you’d be amazing for this job’.
‘They wouldn’t tell me what the company was, but they said: ‘look, when you agree to come for an interview, then we’ll tell you where it is’.
‘The money was amazing, and it looked good on paper, from what I could see. So I went for the interview, and obviously I found out it was Harrods security.
‘I got the job the following week, and it happened very, very quickly, which was good in a way, but I was sort of taken aback.’
She described her time working for the Egyptian billionaire as a ‘living hell’ during which she was physically abused by other security staff, ‘99% of which were men’.
Deborah told MailOnline about the ‘sinister and horrible’ atmosphere at Harrods, recalling one incident where a woman was allegedly ‘indecently assaulted’ by Al-Fayed inside his soundproofed office.
The mother-of-three quit in 1997, the year after joining and re-joined the Met from 2002 to 2009.
She decided to take the company to a tribunal, after seeking advice from lawyers who told her had a claim for sexual harassment and discrimination, following the physical and verbal abuse she received from male colleagues.
It was only years later that she appeared in court for the tribunal hearing, during which, she claimed Al-Fayed and his team had put her under surveillance.
‘During that time, I found out that they’d been following me, taking photographs of me and my daughter, and bugged my house phone.’
She claimed she was also tailed by members of the security team who also took photos of her and her family when they went to the supermarket.
Late billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed has been described as ‘a monster’ amid claims he raped multiple women working for him at Harrods
Some the sexual assaults Fayed is accused of took place inside his office in Harrods (pictured)
Some are also said to have been carried out at his Park Lane property in London (pictured)
‘So many of us lived in fear and we kept it secret for so long as nobody thought we were telling the truth,’ she said.
‘I have never gone back into Harrods since I left in 1997, I was too terrified to go back there.
‘But thank goodness we are now in a position to be able to talk about it.’
Serious questions are already being asked over how Harrods, the CPS and the Met missed opportunities to stop the alleged serial predator. The late billionaire is believed to have used the Knightsbridge store, which he sold in 2010, to systematically procure, groom and abuse dozens of women.
Harrowing testimony from survivors suggests he was aided by a network of people including security guards, other staff and doctors who conducted sexual health checks on victims.
Current Harrods managing director Michael Ward yesterday apologised and said the business ‘failed our colleagues’. He added it is clear Al Fayed ‘presided over a toxic culture’.
Lawyers for the Justice for Harrods Survivors group said they now represent 60 alleged victims and have received 200 enquiries, including several relating to Fulham Football Club under the period of Al Fayed’s ownership.
Mr Ward said an independent review was under way into issues arising from the allegations. He added: ‘We failed our colleagues and for that we are deeply sorry.
‘As someone who has worked at Harrods since 2006, and therefore worked for Fayed until 2010, I feel it is important to make it clear that I was not aware of his criminality and abuse. While it is true that rumours of his behaviour circulated in the public domain, no charges or allegations were ever put to me by the police, the CPS, internal channels or others. Had they been, I would, of course, have acted immediately.’
Mr Ward said Al Fayed operated Harrods ‘as his own personal fiefdom’, adding: ‘It is now clear he presided over a toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation, fear of repercussion and sexual misconduct. This was a shameful period in the business’s history.’
He said a settlement process has been established, designed in consultation with independent experts in personal injury litigation. Fulham has said it is in the process of establishing whether anyone at the club was affected.
Former flight attendant Ms MacDonald has alleged she was sexually assaulted by Al Fayed at 30,000ft as his bodyguards looked on.
Waiving her right to anonymity, she said flying with him on his £35million jet ‘scared the hell out of me’ as it was impossible to escape his clutches while everybody else turned a blind eye.
On a flight from London to Paris in 2007, Ms MacDonald, then 28, said Al Fayed molested her and made lewd comments. She said: ‘He grabbed my crotch and started shouting at me, “your suit is too tight, I can see your p****”.’
