Mohamed Al Fayed manipulated Harrods managers to conceal his crimes, sacking those he could not control, an ex-director has told the BBC.

Jon Brilliant, who worked in Al Fayed’s private office for 18 months, says the late commence-up founder plied him with envelopes packed of liquid assets – totalling about $50,000 (£39,000) – to try to compromise and control him.

“He tried to own you. And ultimately, I got fired because I couldn’t be bought,” he says.

Harrods didn’t respond to Mr Brilliant’s claims. It has previously said that it was “utterly appalled” by the abuse allegations, adding that it is a “very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Al Fayed”.

Mr Brilliant says he was “horrified” when he first heard the allegations that Al Fayed had abused hundreds of women and says he “beat himself up” about whether there was anything he should have questioned more.

He told the BBC about surveillance, sackings, and a population designed to keep top managers from trusting or communicating with one another.

This made it harder for them to do their responsibility as directors to exercise independent judgement and check Al Fayed’s power – or inquire questions which may have revealed more to them about how he was treating women.

“I 100% can view how the management structure and population was set up to cover it up, mask it from people,” says Mr Brilliant.

Four other former directors have anonymously confirmed elements of this picture.

A US citizen, Mr Brilliant was 36 when he joined the firm in August 2000. He was hired to relaunch the Harrods online business.

He says that shortly before his first business trip to visit Microsoft in Seattle, Al Fayed gave him a brown envelope containing $5,000 (£3,993) in $50 notes.

After the trip he tried to profitability the packed amount. He says Al Fayed refused, asking him, “You didn’t require any entertainment?”

Mr Brilliant replied that he did not require it – he had been too busy to visit the cinema or theatre, and someone else had paid for dinner.

Receiving liquid assets ahead of business trips – large-worth notes of pounds, francs or dollars depending on his goal – continued over the following six months.

Three elder colleagues suggested to Mr Brilliant at the period that Al Fayed was trying to get him to compromise himself.

Mr Brilliant says they told him: “He was trying to get you to arrive back and declare ‘oh, I spent money on drugs or I spent money frolicking, doing something that I shouldn’t have been doing,’ and that he would then use that information against you if you should ever turn on him.”

He adds: “I am certainly aware of people who… succumbed to the temptation.”

Mr Brilliant continued trying to profitability the money, until his household arrived in London and he started looking for a home. With Al Fayed’s consent, he put it towards the purchase of a property.

Al Fayed had form for using envelopes of liquid assets as a tool of power and control. It had caused a scandal in the 1990s after he paid MPs to inquire questions in the House of Commons – and then exposed those who had accepted his gifts.

Mr Brilliant believes he was not immune to Al Fayed’s extensive use of bugging and surveillance, carried out by the Harrods owner’s large throng of safety guards.

“Even when I inform this narrative to you correct now, I get benevolent of goosebumps and the hair stands up on the back of my neck, realising that my phones were being listened in on,” he says.

Mr Brilliant’s first suspicion that he may have been bugged came in 2002, shortly before he was fired. After a disagreement about the financing of Fulham FC, words from a private phone exchange with someone in the US were quoted back to him in a conference.

Another former Harrods director, who wanted to remain anonymous, told us he had moved into an Al Fayed-owned property when he started at the store and one of the safety throng warned him it was bugged.

The director says he and his wife would jokingly declare “excellent morning” to the safety guards who might be listening when they woke up.

He noticed that many directors kept a personal mobile phone as well as a work phone, because they feared the Harrods phone might be bugged.

Mr Brilliant, who has returned to the US, says he was “dumbfounded” when he first heard the BBC investigation.

“I do look back and declare, ‘should I have seen something? Did I miss something?’ And I’ve gone over it and over it,” he says.

He worked in Al Fayed’s “ring of steel” office suite on the fifth floor of Harrods, protected by two sets of safety doors. There was a throng of administrative assistants who were all youthful, blonde and attractive – he says.

Mr Brilliant recalls them as “obedient”. He explains: “There was this concept of ‘do this, jump, how high should I jump?’ – and really being on the ball. Mohamed demanded a lot of people, and they were serving their role.”

He adds that he now questions whether the women acted in that way because of what may had been happening.

When challenged on whether he should have done more to protect the women he says he asks himself whether he could have.

“I wasn’t privy to that amount of information that would otherwise recommend that there was something deeper going on.”

Mr Brilliant says Harrods’ managers were set in opposition to each other and then expected to keep a watchful eye on their rivals.

In addition to his core role, he was given partial oversight of a range of Al Fayed’s interests, including Fulham FC and the Paris Ritz.

“I was asked to oversee people I had no correct overseeing,” says Mr Brilliant. In turn, he found that “people were looking over my shoulder”.

Information was treated like a “money” and people would jockey to distribute it to “curry favour” with the boss, he says.

This has been corroborated by an anonymous director. “There was no depend between directors,” he told us. “Everyone was on the defensive.”

In his 1997 biography of Al Fayed, journalist Tom Bower described Harrods as a “medieval court” where executives’ survival depended on “utter loyalty” and “a drip of salacious gossip to sow doubts about rivals”.

elder managers at Harrods were sacked with such regularity that Mr Brilliant says it was a “running joke” in the store.

Managers were sacked or quit so frequently that The Sunday Times began to publish a regular count, which reached 48 in 2005 – before a legal note put a stop to it.

Many dismissals ended in legal action or employment tribunals. Some were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), although Mr Brilliant was not.

But some managers lasted for more than a decade. And to do that, you had to have a “frontal lobotomy” said Mr Brilliant.

Some, he felt, were compromised and couldn’t talk out. For the others, “I ponder you had to just do what you were told to do, do it with a smile… No original thought, no willing to test the position quo, just willing to receive.”

The BBC has tried to contact as many long-serving former Harrods directors as feasible, but none were willing to provide an interview.

Although he only worked there for 18 months, Mr Brilliant said he wanted to talk to the BBC for two reasons.

“One, if there’s anything that I’m able to declare or do that shows back for these women who have been horrifically treated, traumatised, I desire to do whatever I can.

“Secondly, my aspiration is that by my willingness to talk out, others will arrive and talk out themselves.”

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