Tories are urging Treasury Minister Tulip Siddiq to step back from anti-corruption work amid claims she helped her family embezzle £4billion from a nuclear plant project.
The Rooppur nuclear power plant was built in Bangladesh by Russian state-owned company Rosatom.
But the Office for Financial Sanctions Implementation – which Ms Siddiq oversees – has imposed at least 45 financial sanctions on companies and individuals linked to Rosatom over the war on Ukraine.
Measures against Rosatom subsidiaries must be regularly reviewed by Hampstead MP Ms Siddiq.
Tory Home Affairs spokesman Matt Vickers said last night: ‘Keir Starmer must ensure Tulip is recused from all sanctions and anti-corruption policy decisions immediately while questions about her personal dealings remain unanswered.’
Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) says the alleged embezzlement was between 2009 and ’23 while Ms Siddiq’s aunt Sheikh Hasina ruled as Bangladesh Prime Minister with an iron fist.
Hasina fled Bangladesh to India in August with Ms Siddiq’s mother Sheikh Rehana after the deaths of hundreds of protesters.
Bangladesh’s High Court has heard claims Ms Siddiq, 42, may have helped to ‘broker’ the nuclear plant deal, worth a total £10billion.
The deal was signed in the Kremlin in 2013 by Ms Hasina and Vladimir Putin in the presence of Ms Siddiq, who was then a Labour councillor.
The ACC is also investigating Ms Siddiq’s mother, 69, her ex-PM aunt, 77, and two other relatives. They are alleged to have siphoned off £3.9billion through fake companies and Malaysian bank accounts.
Last night Ms Siddiq and three relatives were in a new corruption probe over a separate £1.4billion allegedly siphoned from eight government projects in her native Bangladesh.
Ms Siddiq has vehemently denied all the allegations, with Labour officials saying no evidence has been presented to support any of the claims.
But within hours of the Daily Mail exclusively revealing the nuclear investigation, an official from the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Ethics Team interviewed Ms Siddiq, who is reported to have described the claims as ‘politically-motivated.’
The ACC has ordered the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit to supply ‘documents and statements of offshore bank accounts’ belonging to Ms Siddiq and four others.
The Treasury declined to comment on Ms Siddiq’s continued role in charge of its Office for Financial Sanctions Implementation.