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UK Home Affairs Minister Tulip Siddiq was given a central London flat by someone linked to the recently deposed Bangladesh government.
Siddiqeconomic secretary to the Treasury, was given a two-bedroom flat near King’s Cross in 2004 without paying, according to previously unreported Land Registry documents.
Reports indicate that the donor was Abdul Motalif, a developer and friend of people related to Siddiq’s aunt, the former prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the Awami League party.
The King’s Cross property, which Siddiq still owns, was bought in January 2001 for £195,000, records show. A neighboring flat in the building sold in August for £650,000.
“Any suggestion that the owner Tulip Siddiq of this property, or any other property is connected in any way with the support of Awami League, will be very wrong,” said the minister’s spokesperson. .
Motalif confirmed to the Financial Times by phone that he had bought the King’s Cross property but declined to say what he did with it.
“After the financial support given by Tulip’s parents to her friend during a difficult time in her life, she then transferred the land she owned to the owners of Tulip to thank her parents for their support,” said a person familiar with the matter. .
Details of the gift raise fresh questions about Siddiq’s ability to distance himself from corruption allegations, as he has been called in the probe last month by the Bangladesh Anti-Corruption Commission.
The Bangladeshi investigation came after a political rival of Sheikh Hasina accused her family, including Siddiq, of cutting off a Russian-backed nuclear power project, which they denied.
Members of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League are also accused of misleading funds from the banking system of Bangladesh to buy goods in UK, US, United Arab Emirates and Singapore. They have denied the allegations.
Siddiq holds a brief in the British government that includes responsibility for anti-money laundering and crackdown on illegal funds.
The electoral roll records show that Siddiq lived in a flat in King’s Cross in the early 2000s and that his siblings moved in a few years later. Siddiq declared rental income from two flats in his MP’s declaration of financial interests.
Motalif, now 70, lives in south-east London. Companies House records show him listed as the owner of a small company that has since been dissolved.
The electoral roll data shows that he endorsed Moin Ghani, a lawyer who went on to represent the Awami League-led government and was present. photographed and Sheikh Hasina, to live in a King’s Cross flat before giving it to Siddiq. Ghani did not respond to a request for comment.
The data also shows that Motalif shared a residential address in south-east London with Mojibul Islam, the son of a former Awami League MP, between 2014 and 2024.
Motalif and Islam both confirmed they were registered to an address in south-east London.
According to Land Registry documents, the gift of the King’s Cross property was made before Siddiq became an MP, meaning he did not have to make any declarations about it.
The documents show that, in 2018, Siddiq extended the lease on the King’s Cross property by £90,000. She also bought a flat with her husband for £865,000 in her London borough of Hampstead and Highgate.
Land Registry documents show there is currently no mortgage on any of the flats.
A person with knowledge of the matter said that five years after Siddiq bought the flat in the district with her husband, she “paid off the rest of the mortgage using only the couple’s money”.
Siddiq was reprimanded by the parliamentary standards commissioner last year after he failed to produce rent money on a district flat.
Before becoming an MP in 2015, Siddiq worked for a number of charities and as a consultant to Philip Gould Associates, a post-Labour peer and policy firm.
Muhammad Yunus, head of Bangladesh’s interim government, which took power in August, has described Awami League as “fascist”. Rival parties and human rights organizations have accused them of rigging elections, committing extrajudicial killings and seizing state institutions.
Last month Sheikh Hasina denied that she had ordered security forces to use lethal force against protesters and said the allegations against her were “false lies”.
Downing Street said last month that UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer “has confidence” in Siddiq, adding that he “refused to be involved in the allegations made” about the nuclear power plant backed by Russia.
UK government officials also said they saw no evidence of Siddiq’s wrongdoing.
Siddiq has been a member of the Labor party since he was 16. But he has also worked for a while in the Awami League’s EU and UK “lobbying and electoral strategy team”, according to Labour. blog post which has since been deleted.
UK-based members of the Awami League have the campaign is close to Siddiq in most British general elections, including last year’s election that brought Labor to power, according to people familiar with the matter.
“If it wasn’t for your help. I would not be able to stand here as a British MP,” Siddiq told a crowd of Awami League supporters in 2015, shortly after becoming an MP, at an event in London in honor of Sheikh Hasina.
From 2022, Siddiq has rented the £2.1mn London home of Abdul Karim, a senior member of the UK wing of the Awami League. He moved to a property outside his district after it was purchased in July 2022, according to documents.
Siddiq’s partner said he was paying “market fees” and that the relationship between him and Karim had been properly disclosed to parliamentary authorities.
