Tulip Siddiq, the MP for Hampstead and Highgate and a former Treasury minister, has described her impending corruption trial in Bangladesh as a “Kafkaesque nightmare”, insisting she is “collateral damage” in the political turmoil following the ousting of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina.
The 42-year-old, who resigned as economic secretary to the Treasury in January, was formally indicted in Dhaka on charges of using her influence as the niece of the ousted prime minister to secure a plot of land for her mother, brother and sister in Purbachal. She called the allegations “completely absurd”. A trial date has been set for 11 August for her and more than 20 others.
Speaking exclusively, Siddiq said she had not yet seen an official summons and remained unclear about the precise charges against her. “I’m taking advice from Hugo Keith KC, who’s advising me on what my next steps are,” she said. “I’m supposedly days away from a showcase trial in a foreign country, and I still don’t know what the charges are against me.” Bangladeshi authorities have said they would try her in absentia if necessary, and the question of an extradition treaty between Bangladesh and the UK may yet be tested.
Siddiq, a close ally of Sir Keir Starmer, was appointed to the Treasury last year after Labour’s general election victory, a role she said she “loved and was good at”. Her aunt’s government collapsed amid mass protests, with Sheikh Hasina and Siddiq’s mother fleeing to India. Siddiq noted the murder of her grandfather, Bangladesh’s first president, in the 1975 coup, saying she was “not here to defend my aunt”.
The allegations also include claims she embezzled $5bn from a Russian nuclear power deal and that she was gifted a flat in King’s Cross in 2004 by an associate of the Awami League. Siddiq dismissed the stories, explaining that a 2013 photo with Vladimir Putin was a brief encounter during a sightseeing trip, and that the flat belonged to her godfather. She admitted she had previously told a newspaper her parents bought the flat, blaming the error on her elderly parents’ failing memory.
