Passport
Mohamed is proud to be an Egyptian. He is and always has been an Egyptian citizen. But because his four younger children were born in England and had British passports, Mohamed decided that he should apply for naturalisation as a British subject. With most of his commercial interests concentrated in Britain, a country he had lived in for more than 40 years, this seemed a sensible and reasonable thing to do.
Before he applied for a passport, he made enquiries in the highest echelons of the Conservative government and was told, “Just put the application in. You’ll get a passport”. He waited. He waited 13 months. He then received a three-line letter stating that the application was refused. No explanation. What had happened between application and refusal? “Cash for Questions” had happened.
Mohamed’s courageous revelations, through The Guardian newspaper in October 1994, detailing corruption among Tory MPs in the government had caused a massive political scandal. It had led to the resignation or two ministers and the sacking of a third. It had rocked the government of Prime Minister John Major to its foundations. Major and the Tory Party were furious with Mohamed and were out for blood. By telling the truth, Mohamed had set parliament on a course to clear up the corruption that was polluting the political process. But there was a personal price for him to pay.
In an act of petty spite, the Tory government took its revenge on Mohamed by refusing him the only thing he had ever asked any government for, a passport. Although he had certainly done much to benefit the country of his adoption, Mohamed had never once sought any favours from a British government. But his credit account with U.K. Limited was an impressive one.
In his time, Mohamed had helped to save the pound sterling, he had generated business worth billions of pounds to British firms and he had provided first class employment for 25,000 British people.
In 1984, the government of Margaret Thatcher was seriously concerned about the falling value of the Pound Sterling on the foreign exchange markets. The UK pound had fallen so far that is was approaching the value of the U.S. dollar. Things had become so serious that the Sultan of Brunei, then considered the world’s richest man, was seriously considering moving his huge financial assets out of Sterling and into dollars. Had this happened, it would have been disastrous for the pound. Mrs. Thatcher’s Chief-of-Staff, Charles Powell, came to Mohamed. He knew that Mohamed was a friend of the Sultan. He pleaded with Mohamed to intervene on behalf of Mrs. Thatcher to try to persuade the Sultan to keep his billions in London, where they were invested by the Crown Agents, part of the government apparatus.
Mohamed said he would try. He not only tried, he succeeded. The Sultan saw the wisdom of Mohamed’s words. He reconsidered. He cancelled the transfer of funds to Citibank in New York. Thus, a Sterling crisis was averted. Mrs. Thatcher was so grateful to Mohamed that she invited him to dinner at No.10 Downing Street, virtually kissing his hand, and placing him at her table next to her daughter, Carole Thatcher.
The Thatcher government later asked further favours of him and Mohamed always delivered, just as years earlier, in the Gulf, he had made sure that British construction companies and banks were the major beneficiaries of the massive contracts that were available during the first building boom in Dubai. As the intermediary appointed by Dubai’s Ruler, Sheikh Rashid al Makhtoum, it was Mohamed’s job to oversee the huge building projects that laid the foundations for the phenomenal growth of the Emirate of Dubai. Mohamed brought in the banks to finance the work and the construction companies who would do the work. He then made sure that everything happened to plan.
David Douglas Home, now the Earl of Home and Chairman of Coutts Bank, was at the time the chairman of the leading merchant bank, Morgan Grenfell. He put on record the tremendous debt that Britain owed to Mohamed in generating billions of pounds worth of business. This business benefited British companies at a time when the British domestic economy was experiencing severe difficulties. It is not going too far to saw that at times during the 1970s it was only export earnings that kept Britain’s economy afloat; much of that profit was earned in the Gulf and in particular in Dubai.
When, in 1985, Mohamed and his family bought the House of Fraser group of companies, they assumed the responsibility for a work force of more than 25,000 people. Mohamed and his younger brother Ali completely turned around the fortunes of the House of Fraser department stores. When the stores' group was floated on the London Stock Exchange in April 1994, House of Fraser was a first class company providing superior merchandise and service to its customers, while providing excellent career opportunities for an outstanding work force whose opportunities had been enhanced by the family’s ownership of the company.
As for Harrods, Mohamed retained ownership of the world’s most celebrated store and created his own vision of what it could and should be. After a quarter of century of his care and devotion plus lavish investment, Harrods is now one British institution in which everyone, British or not, can take pride.
Despite the many contributions that Mohamed Al Fayed has made to the wellbeing of Britain, his passport application was rejected. He has never re-applied and remains happy to be an Egyptian. But the injustice of what was done has not gone unnoticed. Many thousands of people have written to him, expressing their wish that he be granted a British passport. And even the man who turned down the application has come to see the error of his decision.
Charles Wardle was the Home Office Minister who rejected the application, acting on the advice of Civil Servants. Mr.Wardle subsequently wrote in The Daily Telegraph, saying that the decision was unjust and the result of political considerations that should have played no part in the process. Mr. Wardle pointed out many of the ways in which Mohamed had been a friend of Britain and its people.
Britain seems to have little trouble giving out passports to many people who have little or no affinity with this country, some of whom later are convicted of people-trafficking, drug-smuggling, theft and violence. It is incapable of securing its borders against a tide of economic migrants and “asylum seekers”. It admits it has no idea how many people have entered the country or where they are. And it has little hesitation about granting passports to many of these people, even if they have lived here illegally by repeated deception.
But for Mohamed alone, who has lived here for more than 40 years, paid his taxes and done his best to enhance the commercial life of the country and many millions of its people, the British government offers rejection. Who was it who said that no good deed goes unpunished? They were right.
Mohamed is quite sanguine about the matter, however:
"The politicians who have denied me a passport have no honour or dignity but that has not decreased my love of this country and the ordinary people who are ruled but such a disgraceful gang.
"New Labour and Tony Blair would never have come to power if I had not made the revelations about the corruption at the heart of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
"Of course, the Conservative newspapers attacked me but what I revealed in 1994 was just the tip of a very nasty iceberg. Look at what has come out since, the wholesale corruption of parliament. Because I was first to tell the British people the truth, I was attacked by the very same newspapers that now win awards for their revelations. It’s almost funny.
"But I don’t care. I am proud to be an Egyptian, the oldest civilisation in the world. While the inhabitants of the British Isles were painting their faces blue and running around in animal skins, the Egyptians were building the pyramids, developing mathematics and studying the heavens. I am honoured to be a son of the oldest civilisation in the world."
.