The self-made Egyptian billionaire, Mohamed al-Fayed who purchased the Harrods department store and encouraged the ‘dishonourable’ conspiracy theory that the British royal family had had a hand in the death of his son and Princess Diana, has just died, according to a statement his family released.
Born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria,
Fayed who was born in Alexandria, an Egyptian city, had started his career hawking fizzy drinks and later he worked as a sewing-machine salesman.
He had slowly built his family’s fortune in real estate, transporting and construction, initially in the Middle East and thereafter in Europe.
For much of al-Fayed’s life, he had majorly been an outsider in the UK, mostly tolerated but not fully embraced, although he owned enterprises like Harrods, Fulham and the Ritz hotel in Paris.
He had had a falling out with the British government over its nonacceptance to grant him citizenship of the country that he had come to call his home for many years.
Al-Fayed had spent a decade trying to prove that Proncess Diana and his son Dodi had been murdered when their car crashed in a road tunnel in Paris in 1997 as they were trying to outrun the paparazzi photographers on motorbikes.
Al-Fayed had died on Wednesday, August 30, just a day before the 26th anniversary of Dodi and Diana’s death, according to his family.
Although al-Fayed was known for self-invention, over-dramatisation, and boasting, he had also been a major figure in key moments in Britain’s modern history.
Al-Fayed had once stated that he wished to be mummified in a golden sarcophagus in a glass pyramid on the Harrods rooftop.
