The independent doctors' regulator refused to investigate alleged medical malpractice at Harrods in 2017 because too much time had passed and it wasn’t “in the greater public interest”. A woman who underwent an intimate medical examination in 2008 while applying for a job at Harrods complained to the General Medical Council (GMC) nine years later that former owner Mohamed Al Fayed had been told about her results. The regulator, which can recommend doctors are banned from working, said it would not be able to investigate how the billionaire obtained the information.
On Friday, the GMC said it would "carefully assess" any new complaints, and described the Fayed revelations as "horrifying". Anthony Omo, general counsel and director of Fitness to Practise, said: "We will carefully assess any new concerns raised with us, and any existing information we hold, and will investigate and take action if we identify a risk to patients or public confidence." Many of the women interviewed for the BBC documentary and podcast Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods said that when they had begun working for the luxury London department store they had undergone medicals, including invasive sexual health tests.
Fayed, who owned Harrods from 1985 until 2010 and died aged 94 last year, is accused of multiple rapes and sexual assaults by his former staff - many of whom have said they felt unable to report what had happened until recently. The woman who made the complaint to the GMC in 2017 was given a.
