British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suffered another blow on Tuesday when his anti-corruption minister, Tulip Siddiq, left her post weeks after being named in an embezzlement investigation in Bangladesh.
Ms Siddiq, 42, is the niece of Sheikh Hasinathe former prime minister of Bangladesh, who resigned last year after 15 years in power and fled the country amid a massive student-led protest movement against his repressive regime.
A junior minister in Mr Starmer’s government, Ms Siddiq previously went to the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser for investigation after questions were raised over whether she had benefited financially from her links with Ms Hasina.
Ms Siddiq dismissed the allegations against her as politically motivated and insisted she had done nothing wrong. But in a official resignation letter On Tuesday, she wrote to Mr Starmer that the media attention on her risked distracting from the government’s political agenda.
“I want to assure you that I have acted and have continued to act with complete transparency and on the advice of those responsible on these matters,” Ms Siddiq wrote. “However, it is clear that my continued role as economic secretary to the Treasury risks distracting attention from the work of government.”
As Economic Secretary to the Treasury, a position given to her when the Labor Party came to power last July, Ms Siddiq was responsible for tackling corruption in financial markets, including money laundering and illicit finance .
Mr Starmer’s ethics adviser Laurie Magnus said on Tuesday that after reviewing the facts of Ms Siddiq’s case he had concluded she had not breached the code under which ministers serve. In a letter to the prime ministerhe said he found no evidence of impropriety or that she made any unusual financial arrangements.
He added, however, that it was “regrettable that she was not more attentive to the potential risks to her reputation – both to herself and to the government – arising from her close family’s association with Bangladesh.” .
And he added: “Unfortunately, I have not been able to obtain complete peace of mind regarding all UK property issues raised in the media. »
The departure is the second high-profile resignation from Mr Starmer’s government in recent months, after Louise Haigh resigned as transport secretary in November when it emerged she had been convicted of a phone fraud offense a decade ago.
Unlike Ms Haigh, Ms Siddiq was not a cabinet member, but she was seen as a political ally of Mr Starmer, and the nature of her government role added to the embarrassment. She was replaced by Emma Reynolds, another junior minister.
Ms Siddiq was named in December as part of an investigation into allegations her family embezzled up to £3.9 billion, or almost $5 billion, from infrastructure projects in Bangladesh .
Officials of the new Bangladeshi government have accused Ms. Hasina and her associates of siphon off billions of dollars of the country every year, bringing its economy to the brink of collapse.
Ms Siddiq was born in London. Her father was an academic and her mother, Sheikh Rehana, is Ms. Hasina’s sister. The two sisters were the only survivors of the 1975 military coup that massacred the rest of their family, including their father, Sheikh Mujib ur Rehman, the founding leader of Bangladesh.
Fury over the Bangladeshi investigation prompted British media to focus more on Ms Siddiq’s links to her aunt, including reporting that she had lived in London properties with links to Ms Hasina.
The interim leader of Bangladesh, Mohammad Yunussaid in an interview last weekend with the Sunday Times that Ms Siddiq should apologize and that the London properties should be returned to his government if they were obtained through corrupt means.
On Tuesday, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, criticized the prime minister for not acting sooner.
“It was clear this weekend that the anti-corruption minister’s position was completely untenable,” she wrote on social media. “Yet Keir Starmer hesitated and delayed in protecting his close friend.”
In the formal exchange of letters which followed Ms Siddiq’s departure, Mr Starmer wrote that his former minister had “made a difficult decision”, but added that “the door remains open” for her to move on. forward – signaling that a return to government might be possible for her in the future.
Mujib Mashal reports contributed.
