Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
A close friend of ousted Bangladesh leader Sheikh Hasina was denied a Maltese citizenship because they were accused in media reports of “money laundering, corruption, fraud and bribery”, leaked documents show. they show.
Shaheen Siddique, the aunt of the UK’s anti-corruption minister, Tulip Siddiq, was turned away in 2013 by Henley & Partners, which at the time had exclusive rights to run the residency program. of Malta by investment.
An immigration official rejected Shaheen’s application for a Maltese passport, noting his links to a company accused by Bangladeshi media of “illegally acquiring important government properties in (Bangladesh’s) Dhaka “, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.
Shaheen is the wife of Tarique Ahmed Siddique, an army officer who was Sheikh Hasina’s security adviser. Bangladeshi authorities froze the bank accounts of Tarique and Shaheen in October last year after student-led protests ended Sheikh Hasina’s 16-year rule.
The passport application documents contain details of how the Tarique family, now at the center of concerns about kleptocracy under Sheikh Hasina’s rule, organized their affairs.
Henley’s decision refers to allegations in 2012 that a company called Prochhaya, headed by Shaheen, had taken valuable land in Dhaka. Shaheen listed his share in Prochhaya in his 2013 passport application.
Critics of Sheikh Hasina’s government alleged that Tarique, who was Sheikh Hasina’s military adviser from 2009 until the collapse of the government last year, had used the national security forces to capture Prochhaya land. . The company in 2016 sold the land.
The documents show that Shaheen made two applications for a Maltese passport in 2013 and 2015. The second was a joint application with his daughter from London Bushra, who is a first cousin of Tulip Siddiq, the minister of the UK capital responsible for dealing with illicit funds. Bushra was the director of Prochhaya, according to a 2011 report.
According to the joint application documents in March 2015, becoming a Maltese citizen would cost €650,000 for Shaheen and €25,000 for Bushra; in addition Henley would take a €70,000 fee.
As part of the application, Shaheen submitted a statement from a dollar-denominated bank account in Kuala Lumpur showing a balance of $2,760,409 as proof of funds. The money was deposited two months ago in 11 transactions. The origin was not specified in the document.
Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh, said that financial laws in Bangladesh prevent people from taking more than $12,000 out of the country in a calendar year.
Bushra, who was studying in London on a student visa, gave his address at the time as a second-floor flat in a large Gothic building above St Pancras station in central London.
The property was a few minutes’ walk from her cousin Tulip’s King’s Cross flat, which was given to Tulip by a British Bangladeshi businessman for free in 2004. FT has been reported previously.
The first passport application in 2013, by Shaheen alone, was flatly rejected by Henley. An internal email said this was because published media suggested he had “a connection to money laundering, corruption, fraud and bribery” in relation to Prochhaya.
In the next passport application, made together with his daughter two years later, Shaheen does not mention Prochhaya. Instead, he lists his company as “The Art Press Pvt Ltd” in Chattogram, southern Bangladesh.
This time, Henley’s employee said in an internal email that “although there is no known negative information”, the Maltese authorities needed more information about the company.
In response, one worker said that Art Press was “a business started by my grandfather Shaheen Siddique in the year 1926. . . The main business of the Company at that time was ‘printing’. . . Ms. Shaheen’s position in the company is Managing Director (since 2013).
In the last leaked documents from the end of 2015, Shaheen is in the list of clients with the title “Requests canceled and/or rejected”. Malta’s official gazette confirms that neither Shaheen nor Bushra received a passport.
Bushra stayed in the UK after his studies. Shortly after graduating from the University of London, he joined JPMorgan investment bank before leaving to become a “lifestyle, fashion and travel” in 2018.
In an interview on YouTube last year, Bushra said he had decided to retire from investment banking after “struggling” for a long time. She says she is resigning, even though her father was proud that he could say that his daughter works in a famous American bank.
“I come from a special situation . . . I was married at the time so I had a husband. I was not worried about having a house if I had someone to pay the rent,” he said.
In 2018, Bushra bought a five-bedroom house in Golders Green, North London, for £1.9mn with her husband. Land Registry records show that the property has no mortgage against it.
“I had my savings and if my savings ran out, I knew my parents would be there. . . ,” Bushra added on YouTube.
Bushra Siddique and Shaheen Siddique did not respond to a request for comment. Henley confirmed that they had not received the passes. Tarique Ahmed Siddique, whose arrest warrant was issued this week by the International Criminal Court in Bangladesh in connection with enforced disappearance, could not immediately be reached for comment.
