ABUL TAHER: Putin’s nuclear deal, a tangled web of properties and how I shone the spotlight on the murky world of holier-than-thou Tulip Siddiq

In the long run, maybe the one shock was why the Prime Minister allowed his scandal-hit pal Tulip Siddiq to wither so lengthy earlier than her inevitable pruning.

Why didn’t she go sooner? True, Sir Keir Starmer and Metropolis minister Ms Siddiq have lengthy been buddies. 

However even for a Authorities that has seen its fair proportion of sleaze – assume Lord Alli and freebies – she had lengthy been rather more than a ‘distraction’, the phrase Ms Siddiq used when resigning yesterday.

I ought to know. I first started investigating her for The Mail on Sunday some three years in the past.

As I discovered, it’s one factor for Sir Keir, his spouse, Angela Rayner and others to just accept piles of designer garments from media entrepreneur Lord Alli, however fairly one other for the minister answerable for tackling monetary corruption to search out herself being investigated in a billion-pound embezzlement scandal in Bangladesh (an investigation which continues).

Like Ms Siddiq, 42, I’m of Bangladeshi origin and had stored half an eye fixed on Ms Siddiq’s fortunes as she campaigned to turn into a Labour MP in 2015.

She was championed by, amongst others, actress Dame Emma Thompson. Her seat was Hampstead in north London, in any case. Then out of the blue Ms Siddiq turned extra attention-grabbing than I might have probably imagined.

Round this time The Mail on Sunday revealed that Ms Siddiq had visited Moscow along with her household two years earlier, posing for images with Vladimir Putin. A misstep that didn’t augur effectively for her future parliamentary profession.

Ms Siddiq (left) along with her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, (centre) and Vladimir Putin (proper) in 2013

Then the highlight fell on her for one more motive. It turned out she was the niece of Sheikh Hasina Wazed, then prime minister of Bangladesh, who was ruling the nation with an iron fist.

In truth it was Hasina signing a £1billion arms take care of Putin and a now-infamous nuclear energy deal (of which extra later) that introduced Ms Siddiq to Moscow – although Labour insisted that Ms Siddiq had been ‘completely separate from any official delegation however was invited to an occasion along with her household’. 

We revealed how Ms Siddiq tried to bury the Putin photograph and delete posts and pictures on her weblog that confirmed her campaigning for her aunt in Bangladesh in 2008.

By 2015, Hasina’s regime was characterised by allegations of human rights abuses and rampant corruption. Political opponents had been made to easily disappear.

By now I used to be watching Ms Siddiq’s rise by means of the Opposition backbenches – and the unstable politics of Bangladesh – with an excellent keener curiosity.

In 2022 a holier-than-thou Ms Siddiq was noisily criticising then-chancellor Rishi Sunak over his spouse Akshata’s tax affairs and non-dom standing. 

And she or he wrote an article for The Occasions highlighting how, more and more, British properties had been being registered in offshore tax havens. 

This, she stated, was a ‘method for soiled cash from Russia’ to flood Britain.

I quickly found, nonetheless, that her personal mom lived in a £1.2million home in Golders Inexperienced, north London, registered within the offshore tax haven of the Isle of Man. 

Ms Siddiq along with her aunt, the then prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina in 2009. Hasina was disposed from workplace final summer time after 20 years in energy

Ms Siddiq acknowledged that persevering with as a Treasury minister can be a ‘distraction from the work of the Authorities’

What’s extra, we discovered the five-bedroom home was registered utilizing a ‘Russian doll’ system of corporations, which meant inspecting one firm revealed it was owned by yet one more. 

In the long run we traced it to the household of Salman F Rahman, one in every of Bangladesh’s richest tycoons.

Hypocrisy? There was extra. In April 2022 I found that Ms Siddiq owned a flat close to London’s King’s Cross which she acquired in 2004 when she had simply left King’s Faculty London as an MA pupil, and appeared to haven’t any earnings. 

By any reckoning, this appeared somewhat fishy.

The extra so when a perusal of Land Registry paperwork confirmed that it was both purchased for money, or, extra probably, as we suspected, was gifted to her by its earlier proprietor, Abdul Motalif, a property developer with hyperlinks to her despot aunt. 

It was left to the Labour Occasion to talk on Ms Siddiq’s behalf. 

It stated Ms Siddiq’s dad and mom purchased it for her from the sale of a household property.

‘Any suggestion this cash got here from every other supply is totally improper and defamatory,’ a Labour official instructed us. There the matter briefly rested.

Armed with new data we went again to Ms Siddiq in July 2022. She repeated that the home was purchased by her dad and mom then threatened The Mail on Sunday with authorized motion if we printed our story. 

Ms Siddiq acquired this two-bedroom house as a present in 2004 from developer Abdul Motalif, who has hyperlinks to her aunt

Sir Keir out campaigning with Ms Siddiq in Belsize Park in 2018

As soon as once more I put the matter on the again burner however returned to it in July this yr when Labour gained its historic election landslide.

Ms Siddiq was now Metropolis minister and financial secretary to the Treasury, successfully the ‘anti-corruption minister’ tasked with stamping out financial crime. 

It was this elevation that may lend my story, after we had been finally capable of publish, ironic piquancy. 

Inside weeks of Labour profitable the election, The Mail on Sunday printed our first investigation into Ms Siddiq’s dwelling preparations.

Leaving apart the questions over the Kings Cross flat, we revealed how Ms Siddiq rented her household dwelling for 14 months however didn’t declare it for greater than a yr. 

Parliamentary guidelines require rental earnings must be declared inside 28 days.

Ms Siddiq apologised to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Requirements, who carried out an investigation and located that she breached the principles, however had achieved so inadvertently.

I sensed there was extra and stored digging. Why was she renting out her household dwelling in Finchley, north London, whereas dwelling in a rented home close by?

Issues had been changing into more and more murky. I later found that the home she was dwelling in was owned by a detailed ally of Hasina’s repressive political celebration, the Awami League. 

Ms Siddiq strongly denies any wrongdoing and has claimed she is being politically focused

Starmer accepted his Metropolis minister’s resignation ‘with disappointment’ and stated that she had made a ‘troublesome determination’. (Pictured: The letter from the PM to Ms Siddiq)

This man, Abdul Karim, was given a particular honour by Ms Siddiq’s aunt Hasina in Bangladesh quickly after Ms Siddiq moved into the five-bedroom property. She denies any wrongdoing.

Ms Siddiq additionally refused to say how a lot hire she was paying for the property, the place property brokers instructed us the market charge was round £5,000 a month.

However barely had the ink dried on our story, when The Mail on Sunday found that Ms Siddiq, together with relations, was being investigated in her native Bangladesh for allegedly taking kickbacks from the nuclear energy plant take care of Russia. Sure, the one she witnessed being signed in Moscow again in 2013.

Dispatched by my editor to Bangladesh, I spent per week investigating the deal. 

By this time Hasina had been deposed, and had fled to India with Ms Siddiq’s mom Rehana. 

As I travelled by means of the congested capital Dhaka, assembly officers and investigators, I noticed the burnt-out buildings and the locations the place police shot harmless college students.

It quickly transpired Ms Siddiq and members of her household had been being accused of embezzling as much as £3.9billion from the nuclear deal. 

Ms Siddiq referred herself to Sir Laurie final week following mounting questions on her use of properties linked to her aunt

She strongly denies any wrongdoing and has claimed she is being politically focused. 

With Fleet Avenue on the scent, I broke the story within the Day by day Mail of how Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Fee was now formally investigating Ms Siddiq, her mom Sheikh Rehana Siddiq, and her aunt Sheikh Hasina, for alleged embezzlement.

Weeks later the King’s Cross flat on the centre of our authentic investigation got here again to hang-out her when she was compelled to confess that it had been a present in any case – from one other businessman with shut hyperlinks to her aunt – although Ms Siddiq ‘categorically’ rejects any declare the property has hyperlinks for the Awami League.

This confession prompted frantic calls from the Labour press workplace. Officers apologised profusely, conceding that they knew I had made the identical inquiries in 2022. 

The officers instructed me they didn’t ‘intentionally mislead’ me or The Mail on Sunday, however instructed me Ms Siddiq purchased the flat with the assistance of her dad and mom ‘in good religion’.

Whereas I consider the Labour Occasion didn’t mislead me intentionally, The Mail on Sunday took the view that Ms Siddiq lied to us. 

So we printed our personal story that weekend, detailing precisely what Ms Siddiq instructed us and the way she had threatened to sue when cornered.

Yesterday Sir Laurie Magnus, the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser who investigated Ms Siddiq, stated the minister admitted to him she ‘misled’ the general public after we made our 2022 inquiry in regards to the King’s Cross property, however she stated it was ‘inadvertent’. 

Sir Laurie didn’t determine any ‘proof of improprieties’ linked with Ms Siddiq in respect of his investigation typically.

Now Ms Siddiq has resigned – although maintains she has not achieved something illegal.

Dozens of Bangladeshis contacted me through social media, e-mail and telephone calls thanking me for investigating Ms Siddiq. 

They stated that her aunt’s authorities – from which Ms Siddiq continues to distance herself – had not solely dedicated the worst human rights abuses within the nation for the previous 15 years, however additionally they looted the nation like by no means earlier than.

It was the world’s worst kleptocracy, they instructed me.

As we speak, I’m happy to have made them glad.