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Behind the chandeliers of the Paris Ritz and the teak decks of yachts moored off Saint-Tropez, women say they were hunted, isolated and abused by one of the most recognisable names in European luxury. Now France is investigating whether what happened to them constituted organised sex trafficking.
French magistrates have opened a probe into the late Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Al-Fayed and his brother Salah over alleged sex trafficking and abuse on French soil, according to judicial sources. The investigation, handled by a unit specialising in human trafficking, is examining what prosecutors believe may have been a deliberate system for procuring and exploiting young women, one that investigators say bears striking similarities to the network built by convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Mohamed Al-Fayed, who owned Harrods, the Paris Ritz and Fulham Football Club, died in 2023 at age 94 without ever facing criminal charges. His brother Salah died in 2010. Both remain at the centre of mounting allegations.
"Every time I met Mohamed Al-Fayed, he tried to assault me," Kristina Svensson, his former personal assistant at the Ritz, told French police. She worked there for two years.
The abuse allegations first broke publicly in a BBC investigation in September 2024, which detailed accusations of rape and sexual assault by women who had worked at Harrods. British police said 154 victims have since come forward. But some survivors grew frustrated with the London Metropolitan Police's handling of cases spanning more than 35 years. They turned to France instead.
"In England they're ignoring the trafficking," said Rachael Louw, a former Al-Fayed employee speaking publicly about her experience for the first time. "They just want to make it about Al-Fayed and Harrods."
She said it was a relief that French investigators were recognising the broader picture.
Louw was 23 when she was sent to Salah Fayed's yacht on the French Riviera in 1994. She gave testimony to French investigators on Feb. 10, more than three decades after the events she described.
Her path to that yacht began inside Harrods. She said Mohamed Al-Fayed "spotted" her in 1993 while she worked as a sales assistant. She was soon placed on a management training scheme, which required her to submit to a medical examination by a Harley Street doctor before being assigned to the chairman's office.
The examination went well beyond a standard checkup. It included a pelvic exam, a breast exam, smear tests and an HIV test. The results were not kept private.
The report, reviewed by AFP, was handed over to Harrods and contained details of Louw's personal life: her parents' separation, her father's location in the United States, the deaths of her mother and grandmother. It noted that she was in "excellent" health, took birth control and had a boyfriend.
"The doctor sent confidential information to arm the rapist," said French lawyer Eva Joly, who is representing Louw and another former Al-Fayed assistant.
"These young women were like meat," said Caroline Joly, another member of the legal team, "and they wanted to know if they were fit to consume."
Several encounters were arranged between Louw and Salah Fayed at his Park Lane home in London, where she said she was drugged with what she described as a crack-cocaine mix. She was then offered a position as Salah's assistant in France and flown there by private jet. She said she refused further drugs and believed things might be manageable.
They were not.
Staff took her passport when she boarded a flight from Luton Airport. Once on the yacht, there was no office, no paperwork, no structure. "I was expected to just be with him," she said.
She described dinners attended by elderly, wealthy men alongside young women. "Lots of touching," she recalled.
When she managed to call her boyfriend, who also worked at Harrods, he was fired.
One night she woke to find Salah in her bed. He said he was lonely. "I went ramrod straight and the rest of the night I was awake just lying there petrified," she said.
What ultimately pushed her to leave was the announcement of a speedboat trip along the Italian coast, with only one bedroom. She said she knew what that meant.
She booked the first Air France flight she could find and asked for her passport back. She got it, though Salah was clearly furious. Back home, she said, "I had blocked out" what had happened.
She stayed silent for decades, believing she was bound by a confidentiality agreement she had signed during her job interview. When she saw other women speak out in 2024, she reconsidered.
"How can I be silent? There has to be a cost to what the perpetrators did. Because if they go unpunished, it emboldens the next man."
Svensson, Al-Fayed's former Ritz assistant, described a parallel experience. She was Swedish, arrived in France in 1993, and was placed at the hotel by a temp agency in 1998 to help Al-Fayed manage his affairs following the death of his son Dodi in the Paris car crash that also killed Princess Diana. It was considered a prestigious posting.
Her interview at the Ritz focused almost entirely on her appearance and background. She was told she was the "spitting image" of Al-Fayed's wife. She was then sent to Harrods in London to meet Al-Fayed himself, and the hotel arranged accommodation for her at a luxury residence he owned.
"I had brought my CV. He wasn't interested in that," she said.
What followed, she told police, was a repeated pattern: left alone in a room for hours with no instruction, then subjected to sexual assault and attempted rape when he arrived. "He'd laugh," she said.
She said she stayed because she was a foreigner with no family network in France, no knowledge of French labour law and no financial safety net if she quit. In retrospect, she said, she felt like a "luxury product" on a shelf.
Staff at the Ritz, she recalled, warned her that microphones and cameras were installed throughout the building. At a Saint-Tropez villa, a housekeeper quietly advised her to block her bedroom door at night.
The Ritz Paris said in a statement that it was "deeply saddened by the testimonies and the allegations of abuse" and that it is "ready to fully cooperate with the judicial authorities."
Harrods said it continues to support survivors and urged them to claim compensation through its independent redress scheme. More than 180 had already received counselling through the programme. The store said the testimonies point to "a pattern of abusive behaviour" that occurred "wherever they operated."
London's Metropolitan Police said its investigation into those who may have enabled Al-Fayed's alleged offending "continues" and urged more victims to come forward.
Eva Joly, a former judge and European Parliament member, drew the comparison to Epstein directly. She said the pattern is the same: "selecting vulnerable young women, transport, accommodation, isolation and money, which is used to intimidate or corrupt."
As with Epstein, the statute of limitations on many individual acts may have expired. But a trafficking investigation can still establish the facts and potentially identify victims whose cases fall within the prosecutable window.
"We are only at the beginning of piecing the puzzle together in France," Joly said.
