Arrest warrant issued for Labour MP Tulip Siddiq on corruption charges

An arrest warrant has been issued for Labour MP Tulip Siddiq on corruption charges in Bangladesh three months after resigning as an anti-corruption minister.

The Hampstead and Highgate MP is accused of illegally receiving a 7,200 square foot plot of land in the country’s capital, Dhaka, from her aunt’s government before it was overthrown.

Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) believes Ms Siddiq was allocated the property through ‘abuse of power and influence’. She has been named in three Bangladeshi inquiries.

Ms Siddiq claims the allegations are false and baseless. She said she has not been contacted by the ACC or any other Bangladeshi authorities.

Her lawyers told Metro: ‘The ACC has made various allegations against Ms Siddiq through the media in the last few months.

‘The allegations are completely false and have been dealt with in writing by Ms Siddiq’s lawyers. The ACC has not responded to Ms Siddiq or put any allegations to her directly or through her lawyers.

‘Ms Siddiq knows nothing about a hearing in Dhaka relating to her and she has no knowledge of any arrest warrant that is said to have been issued.

‘To be clear, there is no basis at all for any charges to be made against her, and there is absolutely no truth in any allegation that she received a plot of land in Dhaka through illegal means.

‘She has never had a plot of land in Bangladesh, and she has never influenced any allocation of plots of land to her family members or anyone else.

‘No evidence has been provided by the ACC to support this or any other allegation made against Ms Siddiq, and it is clear to us that the charges are politically motivated.’

Ms Siddiq resigned from the UK government in January days after it was revealed she lived at a number of London properties linked to allies of her aunt Sheikh Hasina.

Until then, she had been responsible for tackling corruption in the finance industry as city minister.

After a self-referral, the independent advisor on ministerial standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, concluded Siddiq had not broken ministerial standards.

But Magnus said it was ‘regrettable that she was not more alert to the potential reputational risks’ of her ‘close family’s association with Bangladesh’.

Siddiq resigned that same day in January after Bangladeshi authorities launched a new investigation into illegal allocation of land. She said continuing in her role was ‘likely to be a distraction from the work of government’.

Now a court there has issued arrest warrants for both Ms Siddiq and former Prime Minister Hasina, along with 51 others.

Among those are Ms Siddiq’s mother, brother and sister, Bangladeshi media reports.

Sheikh Hasina was Bangladesh’s Prime Minister between 1996 and 2011, and again from 2009 to 2024.

A mass uprising ousted her from power last year after long-running accusations of corruption and brutality. Around 1,500 people died in the protests. Hasina has been labelled a ‘despot’.

Metro has approached the Labour Party and the ACC for comment.

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