A senior Labour minister is being investigated over claims that she and members of her family have taken bribes of up to £4billion in a nuclear power plant deal.
City Minister Tulip Siddiq – whose job role sees her responsible for clamping out corruption in Britain’s financial sector – is being investigated for the staggering embezzlement in her native Bangladesh.
The country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) launched a probe into Ms Siddiq, her UK-based mother Sheikh Rehana Siddiq, and her aunt, Sheikh Hasina Wazed – the ousted former prime minister of Bangladesh who ruled the country with an iron fist for over 15 years.
Hasina fled Bangladesh to India in August with Rehana at her side after weeks of violent protests in which security forces killed hundreds of innocent civilians.
The investigation was launched after an order from the country’s High Court, which heard claims that Ms Siddiq may have helped to ‘broker’ the nuclear deal, worth £10billion in total.
The power plant was built by a Russian state-backed company called Rosatom, and the deal was signed inside the Kremlin back in 2013 by Hasina and Putin in the presence of Ms Siddiq, who at the time was a Labour councillor.
The ACC is also probing other members of Ms Siddiq’s family, including her maternal cousin, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who lives in the US, and her paternal uncle Tariq Siddiq, who is believed to be hiding in Bangladesh.
The ACC official told the Bangladeshi media yesterday: ‘The commission is committed to ensuring transparency and accountability, irrespective of the stature of those involved.’
Last night, Ms Siddiq declined to comment, but a source close to her said the allegations, which first emerged in an American website, were ‘spurious’.
Syed Faruk, Syed Faruk, the UK General Secretary of Hasina’s Awami League party and a family friend of Ms Siddiq, said: ‘These stories are fabricated. These are 100 per cent politically motivated attacks against the Hasina family by the current government. They are attacking Tulip because she is the niece of our honourable prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.’
The bribes probe is the latest controversy surrounding Ms Siddiq since she became City Minister in July.
Within weeks, she became the first MP to be investigated by Parliamentary Standards after the Mail on Sunday revealed she did not declare rental income for a London property for almost 14 months. Parliamentary rules require Members to declare such incomes within 28 days.
The Minister – whose official title is Economic Secretary to the Treasury – apologised and was cleared by the Commissioner who accepted the mistake was ‘inadvertent.’
In August, the Mail on Sunday revealed how Ms Siddiq moved into a £2m five-bedroom house two years ago, which she rented from a political ally of her then-PM aunt.
The landlord, Abdul Karim, was given special business privileges in Bangladesh after Ms Siddiq, 42, and her family moved in. The Minister denied any wrongdoing at the time.
The latest probe into Ms Siddiq and her family comes after Bobby Hajjaj, a Bangladeshi politician in an opposition party to Hasina, filed a High Court petition in September. It was made in response to various articles in the Bangladeshi media that alleged Ms Siddiq and her family took bribes in the nuclear deal.
The Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, which was built in Ishwardi Upazila, an area 128 miles north-west of the capital Dhaka, was signed between Hasina and Putin in 2013 in a grand ceremony inside the Kremlin where Ms Siddiq, her mother Rehana, 69, and the Minister’s younger sister, Azmina, 34, were present.
A beaming Siddiq and her family even posed for photos with the Russian leader afterwards.
The Bangladeshi media reports were triggered by an article in a US-based news website called Global Defense Corp, which detailed how the £4billion was siphoned off by Ms Siddiq and her family members, the writ claims.
The writ adds: ‘The respondent No 13 [Ms Siddiq] is a British Member of Parliament and the niece of the respondent No 10 [Hasina]. She was instrumental in managing the affairs and coordinating meetings with Russian government officials regarding the Rooppur Nuclear Power plant project.’
The documents further allege that 90 per cent of the £10billion cost of the power plant was met by a loan from the Kremlin to the Hasina government, but £4billion was embezzled by the Hasina family ‘in collusion with Russian officials,’ through Malaysian banks.
The documents say: ‘It is alleged that the respondent No 13 (Ms Siddiq) along with respondent No 10 [Hasina] and other family members, received 30 per cent of the embezzled funds in exchange for their mediation.’
The papers claim that up to £709m was siphoned out of Bangladesh through a ‘fake’ company call Prachhaya Limited ‘to different countries including the United Kingdom.’
Throughout Hasina’s 15-year rule in Bangladesh, there have been claims some of the country’s so-called infrastructure mega-projects were riddled with corruption, but none of the state agencies dared to investigate her family or members of her government.
Her rule was characterised by human rights violations, extra-judicial killings and disappearances of political opponents, with groups like Amnesty highlighting the abuses in their reports.
But since Hasina was ousted, investigations into her and her close relatives have begun over the murders as well as corruption.
Ms Siddiq’ mother, Rehana, who is British and lives in North London, has had her Bangladeshi bank accounts frozen by the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), over allegations of financial fraud.
Ms Siddiq’s elder brother, Radwan, 44, who is also British but spent years in Bangladesh during his aunt’s rule, has also had his bank accounts frozen by the BFIU.
The agency has also ordered that any bank accounts in Bangladesh belonging to Ms Siddiq be frozen, but so far no such accounts have been found.
Ms Siddiq has in the past praised her dictator aunt as a ‘role model,’ but has not publicly commented on her ousting in August.
However, the Treasury Minister’s connections with her aunt’s hardline political party, the Awami League, goes back over a decade, as she once worked as its British spokesman.
The MP for Hampstead and Highgate became high-profile after successfully campaigning for the British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was falsely imprisoned in Iran.
But Ms Siddiq refused to help or even mention the cases of British residents whose Bangladeshi relatives were imprisoned and tortured in her aunt’s prisons.
Last night, Joe Robertson, the Tory MP for Isle of Wight East, said: ‘It is clear that there are serious questions that demand answers – what is the Minister’s involvement?
‘What exactly is the nature of these allegations, and how can she possibly continue in post whilst under such a serious investigation?’
The Treasury, the Labour Party and Ms Siddiq declined to comment, but a source said she had not been contacted about the matter.
Last night, Rosatom could not be contacted.
But previously they said in a statement to the Bangladeshi media: ‘Rosatom rejects the provocative news published and circulated in the media regarding unethical financial transactions in the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant project.
‘We are committed to transparent working practices, strict anti-corruption policies, and openness in all procurement processes. We view the false information published and circulated in the media as an attempt to discredit the Rooppur Nuclear Power Project, which is vital for addressing Bangladesh’s electricity shortage and improving the welfare of its people.’