Survivors demand trafficking probe and NCA oversight as Met’s Operation Cornpoppy questioned
A survivor-led collective representing victims of the late Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed is demanding that Scotland Yard reframe its investigation as a full human trafficking inquiry, arguing that the Metropolitan Police’s current approach fails to capture the systemic scale of the alleged abuse network.
The group, No One Above, is calling on the Met to broaden the scope of Operation Cornpoppy and on the National Crime Agency to establish a joint investigation team running in parallel, with oversight powers. Lawyers representing the associated Justice for Harrods Survivors group say 421 individuals have now come forward with allegations spanning abuse at Harrods, the Ritz Hotel Paris, Fulham FC, and other properties controlled by Al Fayed between 1977 and 2014.
The Scale of the Allegations
The Metropolitan Police is currently investigating 155 victims who contacted the force directly, including 21 who reported before Al Fayed’s death in August 2023 at the age of 94. Allegations include rape, sexual assault, human trafficking, false imprisonment, drugging, physical violence, and forced abortions.
Eighteen months after Operation Cornpoppy was opened, four individuals have been questioned under caution. The Independent Office for Police Conduct is separately examining how historical allegations were handled; one serving officer and four former officers are under investigation.
A Survivor’s Account
A survivor identified by the pseudonym Justine, who worked at Harrods for more than three years in the 1990s from the age of 22, described a methodical pattern of exploitation. “My experience with Mohamed Al Fayed followed a now familiar pattern of selection, isolation, grooming, manipulation, coercion, transportation, abuse, intimidation, and then surveillance and threat,” she told the Press Association.
Justine described Al Fayed’s method as “walking the floor” — moving through the shop floor flanked by security personnel, identifying women he found attractive, before dispatching team members to summon them to his offices. Women were subsequently kept compliant through surveillance and direct threats.
“Security teams would threaten people’s families, follow them outside the workplace, contact them at their private homes, and make very direct threats of harm or ruin,” she said. She identified John Macnamara, Al Fayed’s director of security — who died in 2019 aged 83 — as central to that apparatus of intimidation.
The Case for a Trafficking Framework
Justine and No One Above argue that framing the investigation around individual acts of sexual abuse obscures the network of enablers that made the alleged operation possible. She identified several categories of alleged facilitators:
“Our passports were taken from us — we did not go through border control,” Justine said. “There were many people who would have been involved in making that possible.”
The call for a trafficking-centred investigation is backed by Phil Brewer, a former head of the Met’s own anti-trafficking unit, who has argued publicly that such an approach would enable investigators to identify and seize corroborating evidence more effectively. Under the current structure, Justine contends, victims are being treated as “siloed” cases rather than nodes in a broader network.
Pressure on the Metropolitan Police
“A trafficking investigation would look at all the networks involved and recognise the systemic nature of the abuse — the financial flows, the medical examinations, the security threats, the bribes, the movement of women,” Justine said. “Without a trafficking investigation and a JIT, the true scale of this network isn’t going to be seen.”
Justine also disclosed that she had reported her experience to police in 2018, following a news story, but received no follow-up. “That was one of the last opportunities the Met had to pursue Al Fayed while he was alive,” she said. “That moment has gone, but there are many people still alive and institutions still operating who need to be held to account.”
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said specialist detectives were leading “one of the Met’s largest and most complex investigations” and that the force remained “determined to bring anyone who is suspected to have played a part in Mohamed Al Fayed’s offending to justice.” The most recent update to all 155 victims was issued by letter on 11 May.