Why Tulip Siddiq, Sheikh Hasina’s niece, has quit as UK minister

Tulip Siddiq is said to be close to her aunt, the ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Now, it has cost the British minister her job.

Siddiq resigned as a treasury minister in the Labour government on Tuesday (January 14) after being under scanner for weeks for her financial ties to Hasina. While the 42-year-old was denied any wrongdoing, she stepped down after accepting that the UK government was at a disadvantage because of the controversy she finds herself embroiled in.

She was responsible for financial services and anti-corruption. In a letter to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, she reiterated that she had done nothing wrong but said that continuing her job in the treasury office would likely “be a distraction from the work of the government”.

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Starmer said he accepted her resignation with “sadness”.

We look at what forced Siddiq to quit, the allegations against her and her ties to Hasina.

Why did Tulip Siddiq resign?

The anti-corruption minister was under the scanner because of her ties to Hasina and the use of properties in London linked to the former Bangladesh PM’s allies.

Amid growing scrutiny, Siddiq referred herself to Starmer’s ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus. While Magnus said that he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” it was “regrettable” that the MP had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt, reports the BBC.

The standards adviser also said that because of the lack of records and lapse of time, he had “not been able to obtain comprehensive comfort” on “all the UK property-related matters referred to in the media”. He also said that the PM would want to consider her responsibilities.

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The probe also looked into Siddiq’s presence in Moscow when her aunt Hasina and Russia’s Vladimir Putin signed a nuclear deal in 2013. Magnus said that he accepted “at face value” Siddiq’s statement that “she had no involvement in any inter-governmental discussions between Bangladesh and Russia or any form of official role.”

However, after the adviser submitted his conclusions, Siddiq decided to step down.

Starmer accepted her resignation and thanked her for her work, adding that he recognised there was no evidence of “financial improprieties” against her. “I appreciate that to end ongoing distraction from delivering our agenda to change Britain, you have made a difficult decision and want to be clear that the door remains open for you going forward,” Starmer added.

What are the allegations against Tulip Siddiq?

The Labour MP has been under the scanner for using three properties in London linked to Hasina’s allies. One of the properties was given to her by a person connected with the now-ousted Bangladesh government, reports the Financial Times. However, in 2022, Siddiq denied that the flat was a gift and insisted that her parents had brought it for her. Back then, she threatened the Mail on Sunday with legal action.

The other properties in question are a £2.1 million (Rs 22 crore) house in north London, currently rented by Siddiq and owned by businessman Abdul Karim Nazim, an executive member of her aunt’s Awami League party’s UK branch, and a property in Hampstead that Siddiq was registered at. It was transferred to her then-teenage sister in 2009 by lawyer Moin Ghani, who has represented Hasina’s government.

The Labour MP was also named last month in an investigation into claims that her family was involved in brokering a 2013 deal with Russia for a nuclear power plant in Bangladesh in which large sums of money were embezzled. According to reports, up to £3.9 billion (Rs 41 crore) from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh was siphoned off “in collusion with Russian officials”.

Siddiq was a councillor in the London Borough of Camden at the time. She was present during the signing ceremony and even pictured with Putin. However, she explained that it was a social visit, where she joined her family and enjoyed “the tourist access… facilitated as a result of her aunt’s official visit as head of state”.

There is a third allegation against the UK politician. Bangladesh’s anti-corruption commission alleges that she was involved in the illegal allocation of land in the diplomatic zone near Dhaka to her mother, sister and brother, reports Sky News. As a British MP, she pressured her aunt to appoint the land to them through planning officials who were reportedly bribed.

How close was Siddiq to the Hasina regime?

Tulip Siddiq was born in London but cannot shed her connection with Bangladesh. She is the granddaughter of Sheik Mujibur Rahman, the South Asian nation’s founder and first president.

Mujib was assassinated in 1975 along with his two sons. However, his daughters, Hasina and Rehana, were saved as they were on a holiday in Germany. Hasina, the older daughter, returned to Bangladesh and went on the become the prime minister in 2009. The country’s longest-serving premier, she was deposed after mass protests in August last year.

Rehana, Mujib’s younger daughter, fled to London. She gained asylum in the UK and later gave birth to Siddiq.

Tulip Siddiq spent her growing-up days between London and Dhaka. She has been close to Sheikh Hasina and was often alongside her aunt as she met world leaders like Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa. She was 16 when she joined the Labour Party. She was also working for Hasina’s Awami League in the UK as a “spokesperson” around this time, reports The Guardian.

When Siddiq was elected to parliament for the Labour Party in 2015, she acknowledged the support of Awami League’s local activists. “Had it not been for your help, I would never have been able to stand here as a British MP,” she had said.

She also attended an Awami League rally in London, where Hasina was present. Siddiq didn’t hesitate to introduce her aunt to British politicians, the report says.

Siddiq nominated Starmer for leadership of the Labour Party in 2020. She later got a role in the shadow education team and then made it to the shadow treasury team. When Labour won the election last year, she got a ministerial role. As economic secretary to the treasury, her job included tackling corruption in UK financial markets.

Ironically, now corruption charges have led to her resignation.

With inputs from agencies