Back to the curious case of Tulip Siddiq, Labour’s former anti-corruption minister who has been issued with an arrest warrant by Bangladesh over, um, corruption. Earlier this month, the Hampstead and Highgate MP was slapped with the warrant after the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) submitted a criminal charge sheet against the politician over investigations involving her aunt, and Bangladesh’s recently deposed prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. Now Siddiq’s lawyers have pushed back, accusing the country’s authorities of failing to uphold the MP’s ‘fundamental right to justice’. And so it rumbles on…
Siddiq’s legal representatives blasted Bangladesh’s ACC for having ‘failed to provide a single piece of documentary evidence’ against her after they filed a request for it last month. The development comes after prosecutors ordered the ex-Labour minister to appear before Dhaka’s Senior Special Judges’ Court by 27 April – while her non-attendance could prompt the Bangladeshi authorities to seek Siddiq’s extradition from Britain. In one of at least three investigations against the Hampstead MP, the ACC accused Siddiq of putting pressure on her aunt Sheikh Hasina – the country’s recently-deposed prime minister – to give plots of land in a Dhaka residential development to three of the parliamentarian’s family members. It’s not just Siddiq the authorities are after, however, with warrants also issued against the Labour MP’s mother, brother and younger sister – all of whom are British citizens living in London. Crikey!
It’s certainly been a rocky few months for Siddiq. Pressure piled on the parliamentarian over her links to her aunt, with the Cabinet Office’s ethics team interviewing the MP over allegations she helped Hasina broker a deal with Russia and embezzle up to £3.9 billion from a nuclear energy project in Bangladesh. It then emerged that Siddiq owned a £700,000 London flat, gifted to her for free by a political ally of her aunt and a probe by independent adviser Sir Laurie Magnus found that the parliamentarian had ‘misled’ the public over the property. The Labour politician quit her government role as City minister at the start of the year – but that hasn’t stopped the ACC from attempting to pursue her.
For her part, the Labour MP’s lawyers say that ‘there is no basis at all for any charges to be made against her’ and are now on the offensive – accusing the ACC of running an ‘orchestrated campaign’ to damage Siddiq’s reputation by making ‘false and vexatious allegations’ against her. Will the Bangladeshi authorities now back down? Stay tuned…
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