Anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq resigned from the UK government on Tuesday after being named in probes in Bangladesh into graft accusations against the country’s ousted leader, her aunt, Sheikh Hasina.
In a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Siddiq repeated she had done nothing wrong but said continuing her job in the Treasury office would likely “be a distraction from the work of the government”.
Starmer said he accepted her resignation with “sadness”.
It is the second ministerial resignation from his government and will be a heavy blow to Starmer’s Labour Party which has struggled since it swept to victory in July elections after 14 years of Conservative Party rule.
Siddiq, 42, has been dogged by claims about her links to Hasina, who fled Bangladesh in August after a student-led uprising against her decades-long, increasingly authoritarian tenure as prime minister.
Since being ousted, Hasina, 77, has defied extradition requests to face Bangladeshi charges, including of mass murder.
On Monday, Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission announced she and family members, including Siddiq, were subject to a second graft probe, this time over an alleged land grab of lucrative plots in a suburb of the capital Dhaka.
Family members including Siddiq had already emerged as named targets of the commission’s investigation into accusations of embezzlement of $5 billion connected to a Russian-funded nuclear power plant.
Bangladeshi money laundering investigators have since ordered the country’s big banks to hand over details of transactions relating to Siddiq as part of the probe.
In her letter of resignation, Siddiq said her “family connections were a matter of public record” and that she had acted with “full transparency”.
She insisted her “loyalty is and always will be” to the Labour government and the “programme of national renewal and transformation it has embarked upon”.
“I have therefore decided to resign from my ministerial position.”
‘Difficult decision’
Starmer thanked Siddiq for her work and recognised that “no evidence of financial improprieties on your part” had been found.
“I appreciate that to end ongoing distraction from delivering our agenda to change Britain, you have made a difficult decision and want to be clear that the door remains open for you going forward,” Starmer added.
Siddiq’s resignation comes at a difficult time for Starmer, with criticism also rising against his finance minister, Rachel Reeves.
Siddiq is an MP for a north London constituency whose ministerial job was part of the finance ministry and responsible for the UK’s financial services sector as well as anti-corruption measures.
Over the weekend, a Sunday Times investigation revealed details about the claims that she spent years living in a London flat bought by an offshore company connected to two Bangladeshi businessmen.
The flat was eventually transferred as a gift to a Bangladeshi lawyer with links to Hasina, her family and her ousted government, according to the newspaper.
It also reported Siddiq and her family were given or used several other London properties bought by members or associates of Hasina’s Awami League party.
An independent adviser on UK ministerial standards reported on Tuesday that he had not found any “evidence of improprieties” linked to Siddiq.
But he said it was “regrettable” that she “was not more alert to the potential reputational risks” of her close family’s association with Bangladesh.
Siddiq’s ties to “one of the principal families involved in Bangladesh politics” had “exposed her to allegations of misconduct by association”.
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