London:
Anti-Corruption Minister Tulip Siddiq resigned from the British government on Tuesday after being named in an investigation into corruption in Bangladesh launched when her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was ousted as the country’s leader.
In a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Siddiq reiterated that she had done nothing wrong, but said continuing in office would likely be “a distraction from the work of the government”.
Siddiq, 42, has been dogged by claims about her ties to Hasina, who fled Bangladesh in August after a student-led uprising against her decades-long, increasingly authoritarian tenure as prime minister.
Hasina, 77, has defied extradition requests to face Bangladeshi charges including mass murder.
On Monday, Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission announced that she and her relatives, including Siddiq, were again subject to a corruption investigation, this time over an alleged land grab of lucrative plots in a suburb of the capital Dhaka.
Family members, including Siddiq, had already emerged as targets of the committee’s investigation into allegations of embezzlement of $5 billion linked to a Russian-financed nuclear power plant.
Bangladeshi money laundering investigators have since ordered the country’s major banks to hand over details of transactions involving Siddiq as part of the investigation.
In her resignation letter, Siddiq said her “family ties were a matter of public record” and that she had acted with “full transparency.”
She stressed that her “loyalty is and always will be” to the Labor government and the “program of national renewal and transformation it has embarked on”.
“I have therefore decided to resign from my position as minister.”
Starmer thanked Siddiq for her work and acknowledged that “no evidence of financial irregularities on your part” had been found.
“I appreciate that, in order to end the continued distraction from delivering on our agenda to change Britain, you have made a difficult decision and want to be clear that the door remains open to you in the future,” Starmer added.
Siddiq is the MP for a north London constituency, whose ministerial role was part of the Treasury and was responsible for the UK’s financial services sector and anti-corruption measures.
Last weekend, a Sunday Times investigation revealed details of claims she had lived for years in a London flat bought by an offshore company linked to two Bangladeshi businessmen.
The flat was eventually transferred as a gift to a Bangladeshi lawyer linked to Hasina, her family and her ousted government, the newspaper said.
It also reported that Siddiq and her family had been given or used several other properties in London purchased by Awami League party members or associates.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)