We’ve all been there — a much-loved (if rather overbearing) relative is in the neighbourhood and you just have to catch up. That, in her telling, explains Tulip Siddiq’s presence in Moscow in 2013.
The trip to Russia, along with questions about various properties dotted around North London, has left the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate fighting to salvage her career in Sir Keir Starmer’s government, and raised concerned eyebrows in the constituency.
It’s never a good look to be accused of helping to facilitate a multi-billion-pound contract with Vladimir Putin’s regime that was allegedly greased with kickbacks — still less when you’re the Treasury minister in charge of tackling money-laundering and illicit finance in the UK.
Tulip Siddiq (left) and her aunt Sheikh Hasina (third from left) were photographed with Putin in Moscow in 2013 (AP)
Siddiq denies any wrongdoing, and the 42-year-old continues to enjoy the PM’s backing after referring herself to the independent adviser on ministerial standards as she had lived in a flat linked to political allies of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who ruled Bangladesh through her Awami League party with an iron fist for decades.
In well-heeled Hampstead and Highgate, a world away from the blood-soaked bearpit of Bangladeshi politics, not everyone is as forbearing as Sir Keir. “Everybody here is aghast,” one person active in constituency politics commented about the property allegations.
“There’s a lot of people working in financial services in Hampstead and Highgate, who are totally familiar with the legal need to report sources of money that might be questionable. Given the Awami League’s involvement, I hope she asked lots of questions when she was gifted these properties. If she didn’t, she’s got lots of questions to answer herself.”
We don’t get to choose our relatives, but Siddiq stuck by her aunt during her controversial years in power
The questions have mounted since the dramatic events in Dhaka of last summer, when Sheikh Hasina fled to India after a popular uprising against the Awami League party’s authoritarian rule, long characterised by allegations of murder, torture, disappearances — and breathtaking corruption.
Tulip Siddiq’s aunt Sheikh Hasina, former ruler of Bangladesh (AFP via Getty Images)
We don’t get to choose our relatives, of course, but Siddiq stuck by her aunt during her controversial years in power. Then a Camden councillor, she was on hand when Sheikh Hasina visited Moscow in 2013 to sign the lucrative contract for a Russian company to build a nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.
Graft investigators in Bangladesh’s new government now suspect that Sheikh Hasina and her relatives in Dhaka siphoned billions from the contract, and claim that Siddiq helped to broker the deal. The MP’s allies allege that she is a victim of a “trumped up” smear campaign by her aunt’s enemies, and she insists she travelled to Russia to join a “family occasion” (one that happened to include a photo-op with Putin).
On the face of it, it does seem a stretch that a local councillor in London would hold much sway in Moscow. But closer to home, there are the flats and houses bought by Awami League allies of Sheikh Hasina. One flat in King’s Cross was reportedly gifted to Siddiq, another in Hampstead to her sister Azmina. Their mother Sheikh Rehana is said to live in a £1.2 million house in Golders Green owned by an advisor to Sheikh Hasina who is now in custody in Bangladesh.
Tulip Siddiq with her mother Sheikh Rehana at the general election count in Somers Town in 2017 (Supplied)
Rehana is Hasina’s younger sister. They were the only siblings to survive the massacre of their father — independent Bangladesh’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — and the rest of their family in a military coup in 1975. The sisters were in West Germany at the time, and Rehana later moved to London where she gave birth to Tulip in 1982.
Given the unspeakable tragedy they suffered, it’s only natural that Sheikh Hasina would want to look out for her sister — and keep a benevolent eye on her niece’s own political aspirations. Both in 2015 and her re-election as an MP in 2017, Siddiq gave remarks in Bengali thanking Awami League UK activists for their help.
In a since-deleted online post from 2010, she described herself as a “spokesperson” for her aunt’s party in Britain. But she later said that it was “categorically untrue” that she was helped into the Commons with their aid, to the surprise of some locally.
“The vast majority of people in Ham and High are struggling to recognise an MP who has been involved in political parties in not just one but two countries and then tries to deny it,” said one local politician.
“And it’s totally unsustainable for the anti-corruption minister to be in this position. It sends a pretty poor signal from the UK to the rest of the world.”
But pending the outcome of the independent adviser’s Whitehall report, Sir Keir is standing by his City minister, even as a drip-feed of allegations continues to emerge from multiple investigations in Bangladesh.
Supporters point to her campaigning for the freedom of her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. But even that laudable campaign is not free of blemish
Tulip Siddiq with Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria on election night (ES)
Supporters of Siddiq point to her robust record as an MP prior to entering government, campaigning for refugees and equal pay — and for the freedom of her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from years of detention in Iran on baseless charges.
But even that laudable campaign is not free of blemish, given Siddiq’s parallel refusal to raise with her aunt’s government the plight of a British-trained barrister and human rights activist who disappeared into secret custody under Sheikh Hasina’s brutal security forces.
Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem Arman said this week that his family was targeted for intimidation in Bangladesh after a Channel 4 News crew challenged Siddiq about his case in 2017 — in a testy exchange during which the MP used threatening language against a pregnant producer in the crew. She later apologised.
Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem Arman
And according to one local party source, a member of Conservative Friends of Bangladesh in Hampstead and Highgate was subject to “quite severe targeting and threats against his family in Sylhet” after crossing swords with the MP. There is no suggestion that Siddiq, who has denied any involvement in Bangladeshi politics, instigated this behaviour.
Before Siddiq first won election as an MP in 2015 for the then constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, a local business owner says he was warned off campaigning for the Conservatives.
He alleges being told by Awami League UK activists that if he did, his family back home would have to go into hiding.
There is no suggestion that Siddiq was aware of any such threats, and she denies that members of her aunt’s party helped to propel her into the Commons.
Siddiq and the Labour party did not respond to requests for comment. In her letter to the ministerial standards watchdog Sir Laurie Magnus, the MP said: “In recent weeks I have been the subject of media reporting, much of it inaccurate, about my financial affairs and my family’s links to the former government of Bangladesh. I am clear that I have done nothing wrong. However, for the avoidance of doubt, I would like you to independently establish the facts about these matters.”
Sir Keir said his minister had acted “entirely properly” in referring herself to Sir Laurie. As the inquiries play out also in far-flung Dhaka, it’s an uncomfortable reminder to Siddiq and the Labour high command that all politics is local, especially where family are involved.