Indosnews- Tulip Siddiq, whose aunt is Bangladesh’s recently ousted leader
By Sam Ellefson
Britain’s anti-corruption minister resigned Tuesday following intense media scrutiny over whether she benefited financially from her relationship with her aunt, former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, as well as a flurry of reporting about how London properties she lived in were paid for.
Tulip Siddiq had served as the economic secretary to the U.K.’s Treasury after the Labour Party came to power last July. Hasina, whose government collapsed last August after mass student-led protests, is currently the subject of an ongoing embezzlement probe in Bangladesh.
In December, Siddiq was named alongside her family in the inquiry and has denied wrongdoing. Since then she has faced mounting questions over media reports she resided in several properties connected to her aunt’s political allies. Reporting by The Sunday Times linked Siddiq via one of the properties to two offshore companies that appeared in the Panama Papers leak. ICIJ’s 2016 Panama Papers investigation was based on 11.5 million leaked documents that shed light on the offshore financial world.
Siddiq resided in a property in the Hampstead neighborhood of London that was originally purchased by Pedrok Ventures Ltd., Panama Papers documents show. The Sunday Times reported that Pedrok Ventures was funded through a $125,000 loan, later written off, by a second offshore company known as Harberton SA, according to the leaked documents. Two of the latter company’s shareholders, brothers Nasim and Masood Ali, are businessmen who have led firms in Bangladesh’s energy sector.
Harberton SA was dissolved in December 2004; soon after, the $342,000 (£243,000) Hampstead property was transferred to the possession of Moin Ghani, a high-profile Bangladeshi lawyer, The Sunday Times reported. Ghani has links to Siddiq’s family and the Awami League — Hasina’s political party — through his parents, according to The Sunday Times.
Ghani gifted the Hampstead flat to Siddiq’s sister Azmina in 2009, U.K. property records show. Siddiq then reportedly lived in the flat, listing it as her address in 2012 and 2014. Her sister later sold the apartment in 2020 for more than double the price for which it was purchased.
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In Bangladesh, Siddiq is under investigation by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission over allegations that her aunt, Hasina, and her aunt’s political allies “potentially misappropriated billions of pounds and that some of the money was used to buy property overseas,” The Sunday Times reported.
The commission has said it also intended to investigate Siddiq’s role in a nuclear power deal between Bangladesh and Russia. She was previously questioned by the U.K. Cabinet Office’s proprietary and ethics team over her involvement after the Bangladeshi commission accused her family of embezzling billions through the nuclear power plant. Siddiq has repeatedly denied involvement in brokering the deal, and sources close to her have previously called allegations that she coordinated meetings between officials “trumped-up charges” and “completely politically motivated,” according to The Guardian.
Despite repeatedly denying wrongdoing, Siddiq said in a resignation letter to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that remaining in her ministerial role would be “a distraction from the work of the government,” according to the BBC. Laurie Magnus, the prime minister’s ministerial standards adviser who reviewed Siddiq’s conduct, told Starmer that Siddiq had not engaged improperly, but that he had “not been able to obtain comprehensive comfort in relation to all the UK property related matters,” the BBC reported. Magnus ruled that Siddiq had not broken any ministerial code but had “inadvertently misled” the public about a King’s Cross property gifted to her by a developer with links to the former Bangladeshi government, according to the BBC.
In her resignation letter, Siddiq said that her family connections have been a matter of public record and that she was advised to recuse herself from matters pertaining to Bangladesh to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest. “I want to assure you that I acted and have continued to act with full transparency and on the advice of officials on these matters,” she wrote in her resignation letter.
Siddiq’s resignation comes less than two months after former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh resigned following revelations she had pleaded guilty to a fraud offense over 10 years ago.
Starmer had expressed confidence in Siddiq in the weeks leading up to her resignation, and accepted her resignation “with sadness,” according to the BBC, stating in a letter responding to her resignation that “the door remains open” to her in the future. The prime minister emphasized that his standards adviser had found “no evidence of financial improprieties.”
Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch responded to news of Siddiq’s resignation with a post on X, stating it was clear the former economic secretary’s position was “completely untenable” the week prior, and that the prime minister had “dithered and delayed to protect his close friend.”
