Police 'took bribes to help AI Fayed persecute staff'

Scotland Yard is facing claims that corrupt police officers helped Mohamed AI Fayed in persecuting members of his staff, including a young woman who allegedly rebuffed the Harrods owner's sexual advances.

- Daniel Boffey

One detective constable, who is accused of regularly taking cash bribes to carry out Fayed's wishes, was secretly given a mobile phone from Harrods to facilitate his illicit work, according to a former security chief at the luxury department store.

Separately, a senior commander in the Met was alleged to have received large Harrods hampers "whenever he had been a particularly great help", and Fayed was described as "ingenious" in his use of the police to access confidential records on the Police National Computer.

One alleged victim of the corruption is said to have been a young nanny to Fayed's children, Hermina da Silva, who was dismissed in 1994 after apparently rejecting the billionaire's advances. She was arrested on trumped-up allegations of theft after threatening a sexual harassment case, but was later released without charge.

"It's amazing what they will do for just a few readies," John Macnamara, Fayed's long-time security chief and an ex-detective, was said to have remarked about the police at the time of Da Silva's arrest.

A Met police spokesman said: "We are carrying out full reviews of all existing allegations reported to us about AI Fayed to ensure there are no new lines of inquiry based on new information which has emerged. This includes liaising with the Directorate of Professional Standards where appropriate."

The allegations of police corruption are contained in a 52-page written statement drafted in 1997 by Bob Loftus, who worked under Macnamara at Harrods, as part of Vanity Fair's defence to a libel action pursued by Fayed against the magazine.

The case was settled out of court but a draft copy of Loftus's statement seen by the Guardian was retained by Vanity Fair's then British editor, Henry Porter, who claimed to this newspaper that some Met police officers had been "important enablers and it could be said that they were a factor in allowing him to continue his abuse years after we settled in 1997".