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UK City Minister Tulip Siddiq has fought back on Bangladeshi authorities’ claims of financial fraud against her, accusing her of committing “false, troubling, unerolized allegations.”
In a letter sent to Bangladeshi’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) seen in the financial era, Siddiq’s lawyers allegedly a levelled claim against her, some of which have led to court charges and have “no substance.”
Siddiq resigned from her ministerial post in January following allegations that she was first reported by the FT that she benefited from property related to the Awami League, a party led by Bangladesh’s retired prime minister Aunt Sheikh Hasina. She consistently denied cheating.
The former minister’s lawyer said the media was “no truth” by Bangladeshi authorities and was used as a “means to publish claims” that are not placed on clients.
The method “is not consistent with the true desire to investigate and establish the truth, but appears to be designed to instead harm Ms Siddique’s reputation and interfere with public services in the UK,” they said.
The letter added that these allegations caused serious and continued financial losses to Siddiq, a Labour MP in Hampstead and Highgate. People close to Siddiq said this mentioned the loss of her minister’s salary.
The ACC said it has the power to prosecute cases and raised the charges against several members of Hasina’s family, including Siddiq, for securing government land in violation of eligibility rules and bypassing standard allocation procedures.
In a letter to the lawyer, the agency said, “Siddiq’s claims were unaware of the nature of the Hasina regime and benefited from the credibility of the party’s corruption.”
The fact that Siddiq said “the fact that he lived in a household owned by the infamous Venar Awami Federation (IS) is evidence that she has benefited from the systematic corruption of the party through her aunt Sheikh Hasina over the years.”
Stephenson Harwood, Siddiq’s lawyer, has referenced various news reports, including recent reports that Bangladeshi authorities accused Siddiq of using fake notarized documents in transferring property to his sisters and accused him of using political influence to secure government land.
The letter, first reported by the Times, said that Siddiq had actually given her property to her sister after her election as a “legal and legally made” transfer member registered with Bangladeshi authorities.
“There was no notarized fraud involved in the transfer and no obscuring the actual ownership,” her attorney said, adding that “no single evidence was identified in the document.”
The lawyers also rebutted allegations that Siddiq is involved in embezzling about $5 billion from high-value nuclear power plants.
They argued that Siddiq had “no involvement in the agreement between Bangladesh and Russia.”
The estimated cost is around $12 billion, and the power plant is one of the largest infrastructure projects in Bangladesh’s history. The project is built by Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear giant.
In January 2013, Siddiq traveled to the Kremlin with Sheikh Hasina as part of a delegation signing the nuclear and arms trade between Bangladesh and Russia.
Siddiq’s lawyer said, “It’s not uncommon for families to be invited to accompany the head of state on a visit to the state, and they visited Moscow with their aunt in 2013.”
They added, “She was not involved in the official discussion and was not part of the official business that both countries were involved.”
The lawyer said SADIQ “has no knowledge of any financial injustice or embezzlement related to the power plant project,” and that it “never benefited” from the project.
In a separate statement from the letter, a spokesman for Siddiq said all claims against her were “false, troubling and unaccused,” and that her lawyer told the relevant authorities to cease production of unfounded claims against her.
