Mohamed Al Fayed manipulated Harrods managers to hide his crimes, sacking those he could not control, a former director told the BBC.

Jon Brilliant, who worked in Al Fayed’s private office for 18 months, says the late entrepreneur showered him with loads of money – around $50,000 (£39,000) – to try to compromise him and control him.

“He tried to have you. And in the end, I was fired because I couldn’t buy me,” he says.

Harrods did not respond to Mr Brilliant’s claims. He has previously said he was “deeply concerned” by the allegations of abuse, adding that it was “a very different organization 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 “wondered” whether there was anything he should have questioned more. more.

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

That made it harder for them to do their duty as directors to exercise independent judgment and check Al Fayed’s power – or to ask questions that might reveal more about his treatment of women .

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

Four other former directors confirmed aspects of this picture anonymously.

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

He says that shortly before his first business trip to visit Microsoft in Seattle, Al Fayed handed 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 want any entertainment?”

Mr Brilliant replied that he didn’t need it – he was too busy to visit the cinema or the theatre, and someone else paid for the dinner.

Money continued to be received in advance of business trips – notes of high value in pounds, francs or dollars depending on his destination – in the following six months.

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

Mr Brilliant says they told him: “He wanted to send you back and say ‘oh, I spent money on drugs or I spent money screaming, doing something I shouldn’t have been doing,’ and that he would then. use that information against you if you should encounter it.”

He says: “I certainly understand people who… gave in to temptation.”

Mr Brilliant kept trying to return the money, until his family arrived in London and he started looking for a home. With Al Fayed’s consent, he set about buying property.

Al Fayed had a form of using money envelopes as a tool of power and control. He 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 you this story right now, I get kind of goosebumps and the hair stands up on the back of my neck, realizing that my phones were listening in,” he says.

Mr Brilliant’s first suspicion that he might have a bug came in 2002, shortly before he was released. After a disagreement over Fulham FC’s funding, words from a private telephone conversation with someone in the US were returned to him at a meeting.

Another former Harrods director, who wished to remain anonymous, told us he moved into a property owned by Al Fayed when he started at the store and was warned by security staff that 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 noted that many directors kept a personal mobile phone as well as a work phone, as they feared the Harrods phone could be bugged.

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

“I look back and say, ‘should I have seen something? Did I miss something?’ And I’ve gone over and over on 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 that they were “obsessed”. He explains: “There was this concept of ‘do this, jump, how high should I jump?’ – and really be on the ball. Mohamed demanded a lot of people, and they were serving their role.”

He also says that he is now questioning whether the women acted that way because of what was happening.

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

“I didn’t have that much information that would otherwise suggest that there was something deeper going on.”

Mr Brilliant says Harrods managers were pitted against each other and then expected to keep a close eye on their rivals.

As well as his central 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 supervise people I had no right to supervise,” says Mr. Brilliant. Afterwards, he discovered that “people were looking over my shoulder”.

Knowledge was treated as “currency” and people would rush to share it as a “favor curry” with the boss, he says.

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

In his 1997 biography of Al Fayed, journalist Tom Bower described Harrods as a “medieval court” where the survival of executives depended on “absolute loyalty” and “a swathe of salacious gossip to cast doubt on rivals”. .

Senior managers at Harrods were so regularized that Mr Brilliant says he was a “running jock” in the store.

Managers were sacked or fired so often that The Sunday Times began publishing a regular count, which reached 48 in 2005 – before a legal letter put an end to it.

Many dismissals were ended by legal action or employment tribunals. Several were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, although Mr Brilliant was not.

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

Some of them, according to him, were in danger and could not speak out. As for the others, “I think you just had to do what you were told to do, do it with a smile… No original thinking, no willingness to challenge the status quo, just a willingness to accept it.”

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

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

“For one, if there is anything I can say or do that shows support for these women who have been treated horribly, who have been traumatized, I want to do everything I can.

“Secondly, my hope is that because of my willingness to speak out, others will come and speak up for themselves.”

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