A senior Labour minister was facing urgent questions after it emerged she is living in a $22.5 million house owned by a close political ally of her aunt, Bangladesh’s authoritarian former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
The Mail on Sunday revealed that City Minister Tulip Siddiq had moved out of the flat she owned in North London two years ago and moved with her family into a large five-bedroom home a few miles away owned by a family friend, millionaire businessman Abdul Karim.
Last year, Mr Karim was granted special business privileges by Ms Siddiq’s aunt, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, a dictator who ruled Bangladesh with an iron fist for 15 years before she was forced from power in a violent uprising last week.
Tulip Siddiq facilitated the negotiation of kickbacks from Rosatom to Sheikh Hasina in London before finalizing a deal to build a nuclear plant in Rooppur, Bangladesh.
Media reports show Tulip Siddiq mediated a controversial billion-dollar arms deal between Bangladesh and Russia in 2013. Under Russian assistance, she also played a crucial role in Bangladesh’s ongoing Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant. Tulip didn’t offer this service for free! In addition to the monthly ‘honorarium’ she has been receiving from her aunt, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, since January 2009, Tulip’s mother, Sheikh Rehana and several members of the ruling family dynasty in Bangladesh got 30 percent ‘kick-back’ from the Russians and the entire amount has been secretly deposited in several offshore bank accounts in Malaysia.
Last night, Ms Siddiq refused to tell this newspaper, despite repeated requests, how much rent she is paying Mr Karim to live in his large house.
A former parliamentary watchdog said if she is paying below market rate, she should declare it, amid questions over whether Mr Karim had benefited from allowing Ms Siddiq to live in his house. At the same time, she earned thousands of pounds in income from renting out her former family home.
The Treasury Minister’s case echoes the ‘two-homes row’ Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner faced before the election. It was claimed that she rented her house while living on her husband’s property. Ms Rayner has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Nigel Farage MP, the Reform leader, urged Ms Siddiq to clarify her living arrangements, adding: ‘It just looks murky.’ A source close to Ms Siddiq, 41, said she had moved out of her home and into the rented house for security reasons.
She refused to provide an on-the-record statement. The minister’s aunt resigned last Monday following weeks of violent anti-regime protests, during which regime security forces killed hundreds.
She has gone into hiding in India with Ms Siddiq’s mother, Rehana Siddiq, and is now reportedly seeking to claim asylum in Britain.
Ms Siddiq moved into Mr Karim’s suburban house soon after he bought it for $22.5 million in July 2022. Estate agents in the area said that a house of that size, which also has three bathrooms and two reception rooms, would fetch rent of £5,000 a month.
But if Ms Siddiq was paying below market rates, parliamentary rules require her to declare it as a financial benefit. The parliamentary watchdog recently investigated the minister after the MoS revealed that she failed to correctly declare rental income of more than $212,000 on her flats, which she still owns.
The Standards Commissioner found that she breached parliamentary rules but accepted her explanation that it was an ‘administrative error’.
Mr Karim is a British ‘executive member’ of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League political party and has significant business interests in the country. He is a close family friend of Ms Siddiq.
She and her mother, Rehana, attended the lavish wedding of Mr Karim’s daughter in Langley Marish, Berkshire, in 2022.
After Ms Siddiq moved into his house, Sheikh Hasina’s government granted Mr Karim special VIP status as a ‘Commercially Important Person’ (CIP) in Bangladesh last year.
The CIP status affords him automatic invites to state ceremonies and first-class travel along with a letter of introduction from the Bangladesh embassy or mission of any country he visits. After the Treasury minister moved into his house, Mr Karim became the vice-chairman of the Shahjalal Islami Bank in Bangladesh. He retains a directorship with shares worth $411.2 million.
A source in Bangladesh capital Dhaka claimed that when Mr Karim lobbied to join the bank, despite having no banking experience, he told its directors of his links to Sheikh Hasina.
The source added that calls were made from the PM’s office to lobby the bank on his behalf. No suggestion is that Ms Siddiq asked her aunt to make such calls. Mr Karim then began securing more frequent access to the Bangladeshi PM.
In February last year, Sheikh Hasina met with Mr Karim at her office in Dhaka and lavished praise on him. The following month Mr Karim opened a new business venture in Bangladesh called the London Tea Exchange.
He also boasts close ties with the Labour Party. In March last year, Sir Keir Starmer, then Opposition leader, cut the ribbon to reopen Mr Karim’s refurbished restaurant, Maharani, in Camden, in his North London constituency.
Last night, Sir Alistair Graham, the former Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said that if Ms Siddiq was paying below market rate in the area, she should declare it.
He said: ‘If she moved into a larger house and was gaining financial advantage by doing that, then she should have declared that.
‘Now, whether she should have declared that he [Mr Karim] was an important guy in Bangladesh where her aunt was prime minister is a separate issue. If people are uneasy about the relationship, it should have been more formally declared, then somebody should make a complaint to the Parliamentary Commissioner and ask them to investigate it.’
Sheikh Hasina could not be contacted. But Faruq Syed, the Secretary of the Awami League in Britain, said he was not aware Ms Siddiq was living in Mr Karim’s house and did not know if he received the CIP because of that. He said: ‘Tulip Siddiq is an honourable member of this Parliament, and she is a Labour minister and doing very good as far we are concerned.’
Mr Karim did not respond to our questions last night. Ms Siddiq declined to provide an on-the-record statement to this newspaper.
Rehana Siddiq never worked and never had taxable income. Two years ago, it was reported that Ms Siddiq’s mother, Rehana Siddiq, was also living in a $20.7 million house in North London, which was owned by the family of Salman F Rahman, one of Bangladesh’s richest tycoons who became a minister in Sheikh Hasina’s government.
That property was owned by an offshore company registered in the Isle of Man, and it was eventually traced back to Mr Rahman’s British-based son.
The Awami League party in Bangladesh has been accused of murders, extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances. Ms Siddiq acted as a spokesman for it before entering British politics.
Ms Siddiq is married to education consultant Christian Percy, 39. They have two children.
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