Following the revelation in Friday’s Financial Times that Tulip Sidiqq, Labour’s Economic Secretary to the Treasury and the minister tasked with tackling financial crime and corruption, was given a flat in King’s Cross by a person connected with the party of the recently ousted Bangladeshi government, the news broke last night that she lived for years in a second freebie property, this one gifted to her sister by an ally of Sheikh Hasina, the now disgraced ex-Prime Minister of Bangladesh. The Sunday Times has more.
Tulip Siddiq, the economic secretary to the Treasury, used a flat on Finchley Road in Hampstead, north London, after it was given to her then teenage sister, Azmina, for free.
The sisters are the nieces of Sheikh Hasina, the authoritarian former prime minister of Bangladesh, who was removed from power last year after uprisings against her rule.
Hasina stands accused by the new administration in Dhaka of “massacres, killings and crimes against humanity”, including the deaths of at least 800 protesters. She is also accused of corruption and embezzlement. Siddiq, 42, is among several family members said to have benefited, although she denies wrongdoing. Sir Keir Starmer has said that she retains his confidence.
Moin Ghani, a Bangladeshi lawyer who has represented Hasina’s government and has been pictured with the former prime minister, handed the property to Azmina in 2009.
Land Registry documents state that the transfer was “not for money or anything that has a monetary value”. Azmina was 18 at the time and about to begin her studies at Oxford.
It is unclear exactly when Siddiq moved in to the flat, but, upon her appointment in December 2012 as a director of the Working Men’s College education institute, she listed the property as her address on Companies House. She did the same on becoming a trustee of the Camden Arts Centre charity in January 2014 and the Hampstead Wells and Campden Trust, another non-profit, in March 2014. Her husband, Christian Percy, listed it as his address as late as May 2016, by which time Siddiq was serving as Labour MP for Hampstead & Kilburn.
Azmina, whose career has included roles at Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change and, more recently, at a children’s charity, sold the residence for £650,000 in 2021.
By then, Ghani, the prior owner, had spent years advising Bangladesh in international disputes. When Hasina’s government nominated him in 2021 for a role on a World Bank panel, he declared: “It was an honour for me to receive a personal note of congratulations and thanks from the honourable prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina.”
The Hampstead flat is distinct from a nearby apartment in King’s Cross that Siddiq was given in 2004 and which she still owns. The Financial Times revealed on Friday that it had been given to her by Abdul Motalif, another associate of senior Awami League members. Before Siddiq acquired it the flat was used by Ghani.
Worth reading in full.
Tulip Sidiqq retains Sir Keir’s confidence for now. But how long before she’s forced to resign?
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