Harrods apologizes to women who say they were abused by former owner Mohamed Al Fayed

LONDON — The managing director of Harrods said Thursday that the London department store is “deeply sorry” for failing employees who say they were sexually assaulted by late owner Mohamed Al Fayed.

Michael Ward said it is clear Al Fayed “presided over a toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation, fear of repercussion and sexual misconduct.”

Five women have told the BBC they were raped by Al Fayed, who died last year aged 94, and several others allege acts of assault and physical violence. Lawyers for the alleged victims say they have been retained by 37 women and the list is growing.

Ward said he was “not aware of his (Al Fayed’s) criminality and abuse” during the four years he worked for the Harrod’s owner, though “rumors of his behavior circulated in the public domain.”

Al Fayed owned Harrods for a quarter century before selling it 2010 to a company owned by the state of Qatar through its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.

“We failed our colleagues and for that we are deeply sorry,” Ward said in a statement. He said Harrods had set up a “settlement process” for Al Fayed’s victims.

“This was a shameful period in the business’ history,” the statement said. “However, the Harrods of today is unrecognizable to Harrods under his ownership.”

London’s Metropolitan Police say they were made aware of allegations in the past and had questioned Al Fayed in 2008 over the alleged sexual abuse of a 15-year-old, but prosecutors at the time did not take the cases forward.

Al Fayed’s family has not commented.

Egypt-born businessman Al Fayed moved to Britain in the 1960s and bought Harrods, an upmarket retail emporium in London’s tony Knightsbridge district, in the mid-1980s

He became a well-known figure through his ownership of the store and the London soccer team Fulham. He was often in the headlines after his son Dodi was killed alongside Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

Al Fayed spent years promoting the conspiracy theory that the royal family had arranged the accident because they did not approve of Diana dating an Egyptian.

An inquest concluded that Diana and Dodi died because of the reckless actions of their driver — an employee of the Ritz Hotel in Paris owned by Al Fayed — and paparazzi chasing the couple. Separate inquiries in the U.K. and France also concluded there was no conspiracy.