UK Treasure and Anticorruption Minister Tulip Siddiq has resigned due to the number of journalists who are in contact with her aunt who was the prime minister of Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasinaand how properties owned by the Siddiq family in the UK were paid for.
After the July election, Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave Siddiq, 42, the role of economic policy. His responsibilities included implementing measures to combat money laundering.
However, in a letter to Starmer on Tuesday, Siddiq said he was stepping down because the controversy surrounding his aunt and questions about who pays for London housing would “distract from the public service”.
She is the second Labor government minister, after Transport Secretary Louise Haigh, in two months to resign as Starmer's cabinet as the Prime Minister has stopped short of accepting the post.
Here's what we know about Siddiq's resignation:
Who is Tulip Siddiq and what is her link to Bangladesh?
Siddiq has been the Member of Parliament for the north London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate, formerly Hampstead and Kilburn, since 2015.
In December, the minister was named in a corruption inquiry in Bangladesh along with his family and Hasina's daughter, Saima Wazed, head of the World Health Organization Southeast Asia, to find out if the family was taking money from construction projects in Dhaka.
In particular, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in Bangladesh said it was investigating the family for their involvement in the theft of $5bn related to the construction of electricity in Rooppur, 160km (99 miles) northwest of the capital Dhaka. fraudulently acquiring plots in a development area near Dhaka.
On Monday of this week, the Anti-Corruption Commission in Bangladesh announced that it had charged the family.
Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) chief Akhter Hossain told AFP news agency on Monday that “it has obtained the necessary documents and has found enough evidence to file the case”.
Why was Siddiq investigated in the UK?
Following this, Siddiq took himself to the legal affairs committee of the UK parliament over questions about whether the London property was paid for by his allies in Hasina's regime.
This article was researched by Laurie Magnus, a policy consultant for the ministry.
According to the documents provided by Companies House and the Land Registry, Siddiq lives in a house in London that was given to his family in 2009 by Mr. Moin Ghani, a lawyer who represented the government of the Bangladeshi leader. A second property in London's Kings Cross was also found to have been given to him by Abdul Motalif, an associate of Awami League party members.
However, Siddiq said he did not know how the money was used to set up the houses.
What did the research find?
In his findings, Magnus wrote, “Ms Siddiq admits that, for a long time, she did not know where she came from in Kings Cross, although she signed a land registry amendment form relating to the gift at the time. Ms Siddiq maintained that her parents had given her the house, having bought it from previous owners.”
After his inquiry, Magnus said on Tuesday that he had found no “false evidence” related to Siddiq. However, he added that it was “regrettable” that he “wasn't aware of the reputational risks” that could arise from his family's ties to Bangladesh.
In addition, he added, “the lack of history and the lapse of time” meant that he “couldn't get full comfort in relation to all the UK property-related matters reported in the media”.
However, they “did not find any suggestion of any unusual financial situation related to Ms Siddiq's ownership or occupancy of the properties concerned by the Awami League (or its affiliates) or the state of Bangladesh”.
Colm Murphy, a professor of British Politics at Queen Mary University in London, told Al Jazeera that this revealed that the government “has no interest in knowing the nature of gifts, even following the letter of the law”.
“Especially when the government itself describes its policies as 'hard elections', when political trust is untenable and when the UK electorate is deeply divided,” he said.
Magnus also tracked down Siddiq during his trip to Moscow in 2013, where he was photographed with his aunt and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the signing of the Russia-Bangladesh arms deal and the opening of the Rooppur nuclear power plant.
Magnus said he accepted the reason the MP was in Moscow at the time was to visit relatives, but added that “the trip could be part of an investigation into Bangladesh”.
What did Siddiq say?
In his resignation letter to Starmer, which he posted on X on Tuesday, Siddiq said that although it was found that he had not broken the ministry's rules, it was “clear” that the matter would continue to “disrupt the work of the government”.
“My loyalty is and always will be to the Labor government and the national reform and reform it has embarked on,” he wrote.
An independent review has confirmed that I have not breached the Ministry's Regulations and there is no evidence that I have acted inappropriately.
However, in order to avoid interference with the Government, I have resigned as a city minister.
Here is my full letter to the Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/kZeWZfEsei
— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) January 14, 2025
What did Prime Minister Keir Starmer say?
In response to Siddiq's letter, Starmer thanked him for his work and said “no evidence of your financial problems” had been found.
“I'm grateful that in order to overcome the continuing distractions from delivering what we want to change Britain, you've made a difficult decision and want to make it clear that the door is still open for you to move forward,” he added.
Starmer nominated Emma Reynolds, a former pensions minister, for Siddiq's role.
How have the Bangladeshi authorities responded?
In a statement on Wednesday, the press office of Bangladesh Prime Minister Muhammad Yunus said Siddiq may have “misunderstood where his money and assets were enjoyed in London”.
“However, now that he knows, he will apologize to the people of Bangladesh,” he said.
Siddiq's aunt, former Prime Minister Hasina, 77, was to be overthrown as the country's leader after large-scale student-led protests in August against the government's proposed redundancies sparked nationwide protests last year.
Protesters also called for her removal after accusing her of suppressing their dissenting voices by forcibly fleeing, which Hasina denied.
The former leader fled to neighboring India.
How has the UK responded to Siddiq's resignation?
The leader of the Conservative Party Kemi Badenoch wrote on X that “it was clear at the end of the week that the role of the minister against corruption was impossible. Yet Keir Starmer was weak and slow to defend his best friend.”
“Even now, when Bangladesh is accusing Tulip Siddiq, he expresses 'sadness' at the inevitable resignation. Weak leadership from a weak Prime Minister,” he added on X.
Home Secretary Chris Philp added that Starmer was “too late to act on this”.
“The independent consultant's report says there are a number of unanswered questions about where some of Siddiq's most expensive purchases came from,” Philp said, according to the BBC.
He said Siddiq's initial appointment as finance minister “calls into question the decision of the prime minister” and called for a reinvestigation.
An unnamed Labor MP told The Guardian that Siddiq's resignation was “his intention”.
“Everyone knows that he is a member of a political family in Bangladesh with connections to great power and money. Who on Earth thought it was a good idea to attract all that attention by giving him that job?” they said.