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INTRODUCTION
The Fayed Allegations: No Case to Answer
Mohamed
Fayed's oral evidence to the Inquiry was vague, contradictory
and palpably untrue.
At the beginning of it he partially withdrew
the false allegations which he made in his letter of 5 December
1994 to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Members' Interests
from which this Inquiry ultimately derives.
From 20 October
1994 to 27 September 1996 the only evidence against me was Fayed's
uncorroborated story. On 27 September 1996 three long-serving
Fayed employees suddenly appeared out of thin air to provide hearsay
corroboration of his evidence and to make new allegations. But
none of them went so far as to say that they had seen me either
ask for or take money from Fayed.
I submit, therefore, that
there is no case to answer on his allegations of bribery and corruption.
CASH FOR QUESTIONS
The original "cash for questions allegation
was that Tim Smith and I were paid £2,000 a time by Ian Greer
for putting down PQs.That allegation was printed in The Guardian
on 20 October 1994 and repeated in their libel action Defence
on 14 December 1994.
(a) No evidence whatsoever has been produced
to justify that allegation.
(b) Documentary evidence conclusively disproves
Fayed's original allegations:
(i) that he paid Greer £8,000-£10,000
per month, varying according to the number of PQs which were tabled;
The Guardian never sought to justify
this allegation.
(ii) that cheques for £12,000 and £6,000
in 1987 and £13,333 1990 were paid to Greer specifically
to cover disbursements to MPs.
The Guardian withdrew this allegation
in their draft Amended Defence of September 1996.
(iii) Fayed himself withdrew the £2,000
per PQ allegation in his witness statement of June 1995. He reconfirmed
this withdrawal categorically in his Submission to the Inquiry
in December 1996.
DIRECT CASH PAYMENTS
In December 1994 Fayed produced a second set
of allegations - that on (i) each of 8 specific dates he paid
me £2,500 in cash and (ii) 4 specific dates a total of £8,000
in Harrods gift vouchers.
These allegations were made in both
the letter from Fayed's solicitors, D J Freeman, of 5 December
1994 to Sir Geoffrey Johnson-Smith and The Guardian's Defence
of 14 December 1994.
(i) No evidence whatsoever, apart from Fayed's
uncorroborated word, was provided to justify the cash allegations
until September 27 1996, nearly two years after they were first
made.
(ii) No evidence whatsoever has been produced
to justify the gift voucher allegations.
(iii) In June 1995 I produced a witness
statement from Timothy O'Sullivan exposing one of these specific
allegations as a lie.
(iv) I also produced to the Inquiry an analysis
of the alleged payments related to parliamentary activity which
exposed them as irrational and absurd (see pages 60-62).
(v) On 23 January 1997 Fayed changed his
evidence from ªon every occasion when I met Mr Hamilton alone
I made payments to him" to something quite different: "I
made payments to Mr Hamilton only when we were alone".
He blamed his original solicitors, D J Freeman,
for misunderstanding the instructions he gave to them on 29 and
30 November 1994. However, Fayed subsequently solemnly confirmed
his original allegations many times -
- by letter dated 5 December 1994 from D J
Freeman to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Members' Interests;
- by confirmation to The Guardian's
solicitors Lovell, White Durrant and by repetition in the Guardian's
Defence dated 14 December 1994;
- in a formal Submission (accompanied and advised
by George Carman QC and Royston Webb) to the Committee of Privileges
on 1 November 1995;
- in his formal Submission to this Inquiry
as recently as 12 December 1996; he specifically confirmed his
original allegations in paragraph 41. If this was such a fundamental
error why was it left uncorrected for two years and repeated so
many times?
CASH IN BROWN ENVELOPES
On 27 September 1996 he produced out of thin
air three long-serving employees to corroborate his December 1994
allegations of cash payments to me. These long-serving employees
also made a third allegation - of "cash in brown envelopes":
(a) His secretary, Iris Bond, falsely alleged
that she saw him stuffing money into envelopes for me.
This contradicts the obvious import of
Fayed's evidence in his witness statement in June 1995 that "no-one
else would have seen the money being given to Mr Hamilton."
(b) His personal assistant, Alison Bozek,
falsely alleged that she saw him stuff money into an envelope
for me and that she did so herself. She further falsely alleged
that these envelopes were left for collection and were collected
by me from Fayed's offices at 60 Park Lane.
This allegation contradicts Fayed's evidence
in his witness statement that "I can therefore confirm that
cash payments were made to Mr Hamilton in two ways: firstly, in
face to face meetings and secondly through Ian Greer."
(c) His doorman, Philip Bromfield falsely
alleged that he recalls me collecting, eight to ten years ago,
two envelopes - of whose contents he was completely ignorant. Each
of these witnesses is apparently endowed with an excellent memory
for alleged events involving me long ago - and almost total amnesia
as regards anyone else. None of them is prepared to say that
he/she saw me being given/taking Fayed's money. Furthermore,
(d) His former legal director (who remains
a paid consultant to Fayed until 2001), Royston Webb, gave hearsay
evidence to the Inquiry, that Fayed had told him as long ago as
1988-89 that he had been paying me.
This contradicts Webb's own admission in a secretly
tape-recorded conversation with Ian Greer in October 1994 that
he had said, in answer to a question from Dale Campbell-Savours
as to whether Fayed's allegations of illicitly paying MPs were
true, " . . . I did not know. I have no knowledge on these
matters." No reason has been adduced to explain
why these obviously important corroborative witnesses were not
identified and produced until two years after I issued my writ
in October 1994. This is particularly incomprehensible as
the June 1995 witness statement of his chauffeur, Glyn John, shows
that Fayed clearly appreciated the value of such evidence.
FAYED AN INVETERATE LIAR
Fayed is an inveterate liar and a fraud. My
own experience confirms the conclusions of the DTI Inspectors
in 1990 that
(i) " . . . we received evidence from
the Fayeds, under solemn affirmation and in written memoranda
which was false and which the Fayeds knew to be false" (paragraph
2.1.2.) and
(ii) "On the one hand Mohamed Fayed
was telling lies about himself and his family to representatives
of the Press, and once those stories were on file or in a press
cuttings library they grew and multiplied without much further
inquiry into their accuracy" (paragraph 8.6.6.) and
(iii) " . . . the lies of Mohamed Fayed
and his success in `gagging' the Press created new fact: that
lies were the truth and that the truth was a lie" (paragraph
8.6.6.) and
(iv) "One of the difficulties confronting
anyone seeking to test the truth of the Fayeds' account . . .
is that the story changes as different parts of it are demolished
or discredited" (paragraph 11.1.7.) and
(v) "As month after month of our investigation
went by we uncovered more and more cases where the Fayeds were
plainly telling us lies . . . after watching and hearing them
give evidence for two days we considered that Mohamed and Ali
Fayed were witnesses on whose word it would be unsafe to rely
on any issue of any importance unless their evidence was confirmed
by some dependable independent source" (paragraph 16.6.5.)
and
(vi) "In our judgment, this submission
reveals the Fayeds' character very vividly. The evidence that
they were telling lies to us was quite overwhelming. But they
were still determined to counter-attack and try to pretend that
they were the innocent victims of some gigantic conspiracy against
them" (paragraph 10.2.16).
FAYED VINDICTIVE AND REMORSELESS
Fayed is prone to invent allegations of dishonesty
(even criminal misconduct) in deliberate campaigns of character
assassination against those whom he perceives as enemies:
(i) See the DTI Report on
(a) Peter Wickman, a journalist, whom he
falsely accused of dishonestly inventing conversations which he
then wrote about in The Observer (paragraph 2.5.2.);
(b) Adnan Khashoggi, his former brother-in-law,
whom he falsely accused of bribery (para. 26.25.);
(c) Dr Ashraf Marwan, son-in-law of President
Nasser of Egypt, whom he falsely accused of dishonesty and forgery
(para. 2.3.36).
(ii) Christoph Bettermann, former deputy
chairman of Harrods, whom he falsely accused of fraud and embezzlement
(see Appendix 3);
(iii) Prof. Barry Rider, former Special
Adviser to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, whom he
falsely accused (together with Saul Froomkin, Attorney General
of Bermuda) of fraud and abuse of position. (See Appendix 3).
(iv) Graham Jones, a former director of
Harrods, whom he falsely accused of bribery and fraud (see paras.
569-579).
(v) Peter Bolliger, former managing director
of Harrods, whom he falsely accused of dishonesty and dereliction
of duty. An examination of these and other cases establishes
a typical course of conduct on Fayed's part:
(i) invent false and extremely damaging
allegations about individuals;
(ii) where those lies involve criminal or
professional misconduct report them to the relevant authority;
(iii) leak juicy details (arrest, police
investigation etc.) to the press;
(iv) use every legal procedure to bog down
the victim, and saddle him with ruinous expense, finally (if a
trial appears unavoidable) settling the case subject to undertakings
of confidentiality to prevent the truth being exposed.
FAYED'S MOTIVES - GRUDGES AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT
AND ME
(a) Fayed has a grudge against the Government
because of
(i) the criticism of him in the 1990 DTI Inspectors'
Report;
(ii) the delay in considering his application
for a British passport and its ultimate failure;
(b) Fayed has a particular grudge against
me because of
(i) my failure, on appointment as Corporate Affairs
Minister at the DTI in 1992, to reconsider the DTI Inspectors'
Report (as he admitted in answer to Q702)
(ii) my Ministerial reply on 13 May 1992 to a
PQ from Alex Carlile MP which described the DTI Report as "thorough"
and "considered" (see "Sleaze" page 148).
(iii) the perceived personal slight to him in
my failure to acknowledge his letter congratulating me on my appointment
as Corporate Affairs Minister in April 1992 and which invited
me to discuss his case against the DTI in the European Court of
Human Rights.
THE TIMING OF THE PUBLICATION OF HIS ALLEGATIONS
The catalyst for the release of his anger and
the publication of his allegations by The Guardian on 20
October 1994 was the failure of his case against the DTI in the
European Court of Human Rights on 18 September 1994. He falsely
claimed that he made his allegations out of "public duty."
If so
(i) Why did he wait nine years after the
conversation with Ian Greer, which he alleged so shocked him,
in which Greer is alleged to have said "you have to rent
MPs like taxis" at £2,000 a time for PQs, seven years
after allegedly making his first cash payment?
(ii) Why did he wait seven years after his
first alleged payment to me and five years after his last?
(iii) Why did he write to me, in his letter
of congratulation in April 1994, saying "You can't keep a
good man down."
THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE
The Inquiry has required me to produce all my
and my wife's bank and credit card statements going back to 1985
(so far as they can be obtained). We have had to produce all
details of our property sales and purchases, together with borrowing
and repayment details since 1985. We have had to produce our
tax returns going back to 1985-6 and any correspondence between
my accountants and the Inland Revenue. In a Court of Law
it would be for those making the allegations to prove them. The
Inquiry seems to have put a positive onus of proof upon me to
disprove them. I have been obliged to waive my legal professional
privilege so that the Inquiry can take evidence from my legal
advisers. I have had to waive my rights to confidentiality in
respect of my financial affairs and Inland Revenue records. In
short I have had to waive all my civil rights in order to avoid
the suspicion of concealment. It is impossible to prove the
negative - that I did not receive cash from Fayed. But the documents
provide no evidence whatsoever to ground Fayed's allegations -
which are completely false and invented. Under oral cross-examination
Fayed's lies fell to pieces. Counsel then suggested that,
whilst Fayed is completely unreliable on any specific detail of
his allegations, nevertheless he could be telling the truth "in
general"; i.e., notwithstanding the complete lack of direct
evidence (apart from Fayed's uncorroborated word) that I was ever
paid by Fayed, because Tim Smith was paid in cash I might have
been also. I reject Counsel's suggestion that " . . .
in the generality he is reasonably reliable . . . "
(Q 1138). The
cases of Christoph Bettermann, Graham Jones, Peter Bolliger and
many others prove the opposite - that Fayed is a compulsive liar
who will stop at nothing to destroy his perceived enemies. He
is a public menace who ought to be prevented from doing this again
in the UK.
I have spent two and a half years painstakingly
analysing and destroying every aspect of Fayed's specific allegations
against me - as they have mysteriously appeared or changed. The
Inquiry has had unlimited access to every aspect of my financial
affairs going back to 1985.
If Fayed has been unable to prove
his case after all this, natural justice requires that I be exonerated.
It
would be a travesty of justice,
- having rejected Fayed's specific allegations,
- to condemn me on the basis of "guilt
by association"
- on general allegations that I was paid
unspecified sums on unspecified dates for unspecified purposes
and that
- the money has been spent in unspecified
ways or was squirrelled away in unspecified places at unspecified
times.
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