Dodi Al Fayed, Princess Diana's boyfriend, who died with her in a tragic car accident in 1997, has been making headlines again in recent days thanks to his late father Mohamed Al Fayed, an Egyptian film producer. Mohamed, the former owner of Harrods, has been posthumously accused of raping several women, and a new interview with Princess Diana's bodyguard reveals that he tried to warn the royal family about his association with the Diana family. [Ken Waugh, Princess Diana's bodyguard, told Richard Kay of the Daily Mail, “He may not have known anything about him and the woman at that stage, but his reputation was already controversial.

At the time, Wolff was concerned about a 1990 Department of Trade and Industry report that revealed how Al-Fayed had “fabricated stories about his origins, wealth, business interests, and resources.”

“I told her that he was basically a nefarious man and that if he could parade the princess and the boys around as guests when they were openly fighting Her Majesty's government for not giving them passports, it would make life very difficult for the queen,” Waugh said.

“Happily, at the time she was shrewd enough to heed advice and see what I was up to,” Wolff added, but after her divorce from then-Prince Charles, “she was no longer obliged to follow palace rules,” Kay said.

“The Fayed she knew was a warm, homely man, and the four children he had with his second wife, Finnish former model Heini Waten, were close in age to William and Harry,” Kay writes in the article, adding that Diana found the Harrods boss's home “full of loving happy, homey atmosphere,” she added.

However, friends of Diana's said that “all of Fayed's properties were wired for audio and video, and he eavesdropped on his guests' conversations.

They warned her not to accept an invitation from the businessman to his family vacation because “Diana may or may not be able to undress unsupervised.”

It was a warning issued long before this year's BBC documentary Al-Fayed: The documentary revealed accusations that Al-Fayed, who died in 2023 at age 94, had sexually assaulted many Harrods employees over the years.

The BBC was not the only one to report on the incident.

The BBC reported that it had “heard testimony from more than 20 former employees” who came forward to say they had been “sexually assaulted or raped” by their bosses.

Princess Diana, however, seemed to be completely in the dark about her boyfriend's father, and Kay, another writer for the Daily Mail, Amanda Platel, wrote, “Princess Diana would have been horrified by one whisper of horrifying allegations against the man who had so charmed her. If she had listened, she might still be alive today,” she noted in her musings.

Kay writes that it was “bitter irony” that this “father figure” would “see in the lonely, vulnerable princess the opportunity to make her his ultimate possession.”

After all, who knows what would have happened had Diana heeded the warnings of her friends and bodyguards, but according to Kay, it seems that their suggestions might have made no difference either way.

“If anything, her friends' hostility toward Fayed helped to push her into his arms,” Kay writes.