A Labour minister has been named in an investigation into claims her household embezzled as much as £3.9bn (Tk 590 billion) from infrastructure initiatives in Bangladesh.
Tulip Siddiq, who because the Treasury’s Financial Secretary is liable for tackling corruption in UK monetary markets, is alleged to have brokered a cope with Russia in 2013 for a brand new nuclear energy plant in Bangladesh that noticed £1bn siphoned off into personal palms.
The allegation is a part of a wider investigation by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Fee (ACC) into Siddiq’s aunt Sheikh Hasina, the lately deposed prime minister of the nation who fled to India in August.
Siddiq has been approached for remark. The Labour Get together has declined to remark.
The investigation relies on a sequence of allegations made by Bobby Hajjaj, a senior political opponent of Hasina.
The ACC can be investigating a number of of Hasina’s members of the family, together with Siddiq’s mom Sheikh Rehana Siddiq, and senior officers from her authorities.
Hasina, who was accountable for Bangladesh for greater than 20 years, was seen as an autocrat whose authorities ruthlessly clamped down on dissent.
Since fleeing the nation Hasina has been accused of a number of crimes by the brand new Bangladeshi authorities.
Hasina is needed by Bangladesh’s Worldwide Prison Tribunal (ICT) for her alleged involvements in “crimes in opposition to humanity” that passed off in the course of the demonstrations, through which a whole lot had been killed.
Arrest warrants have additionally been issued for 45 others, together with former authorities ministers who additionally fled the nation.
Syed Faruk, who runs the UK department of Hasina’s Awami League social gathering, stated the claims had been “fabricated”.
Siddiq was elected MP for Hampstead and Highgate in 2015, the north London constituency neighbouring Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s seat of Holborn and St Pancras.
