Who is Tulip Siddiq and why has she resigned as UK minister?

UK treasury and anticorruption minister Tulip Siddiq has resigned over a flurry of media reporting about her links to corruption charges being faced by her aunt, the deposed Bangladeshi former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, as well as how properties Siddiq’s family owns in the UK were paid for.

Following the general election in July, Prime Minister Keir Starmer awarded Siddiq, 42, the portfolio for financial services policy. Her responsibilities included implementing measures to combat money laundering.

However, in a letter to Starmer on Tuesday, Siddiq said she was resigning from her position because the furore over her links to her aunt and questions about who paid for London flats was “likely to be a distraction from the work of the government”.

She is the second Labour government minister, after Transport Secretary Louise Haigh, in two months to resign from Starmer’s cabinet amid the prime minister’s falling approval rating since taking up the position.

Here’s what we know about Siddiq’s resignation:

Who is Tulip Siddiq and what is her link to Bangladesh?

Siddiq has been the Labour member of parliament for the north London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate, previously Hampstead and Kilburn, since 2015.

In December, the minister was named in a corruption inquiry in Bangladesh alongside her family and Hasina’s daughter Saima Wazed, the World Health Organization’s Southeast Asia chief, into whether the family was taking funds from infrastructure projects in Dhaka.

In particular, Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) said it was investigating the family over an alleged link to the embezzlement of $5bn related to the construction of a power plant in Rooppur, 160km (99 miles) northwest of the capital Dhaka, and fraudulently obtaining plots in the diplomatic zone of a development close to Dhaka.

On Monday this week, Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission announced that it had filed charges against the family.

Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) director general Akhter Hossain told the news agency AFP on Monday, that it has “obtained the necessary documents and found sufficient evidence to file the cases”.

Why has Siddiq been investigated in the UK?

Following the allegations, Siddiq referred herself to the UK parliament’s ethics board over questions about whether London properties she held had been paid for by allies of Hasina’s regime.

The matter was investigated by Laurie Magnus, an adviser on ministerial standards.

According to documents filed with Companies House and the Land Registry, Siddiq was living in one London property given to her family in 2009 by Moin Ghani, a lawyer who has represented the deposed Bangladeshi leader’s government. A second property in London’s Kings Cross was also found to have been given to her by Abdul Motalif, an associate of members of the Awami League party.

However, Siddiq said she was unaware of the financial arrangements behind any of the properties.

What did that investigation find?

In his findings, Magnus wrote, “Ms Siddiq acknowledges that, over an extended period, she was unaware of the origins of her ownership of her flat in Kings Cross, despite having signed a Land Registry transfer form relating to the gift at the time. Ms Siddiq remained under the impression that her parents had given the flat to her, having purchased it from the previous owner.”

Following his inquiry, Magnus said on Tuesday that he had not found any “evidence of improprieties” linked to Siddiq. However, he did say it was “regrettable” that she “was not more alert to the potential reputational risks” of her family’s association with Bangladesh.

Furthermore, he added, a “lack of records and lapse of time” had meant that he had “not been able to obtain comprehensive comfort in relation to all the UK property-related matters referred to in the media”.

Still, he had “found no suggestion of any unusual financial arrangements relating to Ms Siddiq’s ownership or occupation of the properties in question involving the Awami League (or its affiliated organisations) or the state of Bangladesh”.

Colm Murphy, a professor in British Politics at the Queen Mary University in London, told Al Jazeera that the situation reveals the government’s “curious naivety about the optics of gifts, even when following the letter of the law”.

“Especially in a context when the government itself describes its policies as ‘difficult decisions’, when trust in politics is in vanishingly short supply and when the UK electorate are deeply polarised and fragmented,” he said.

Magnus also investigated Siddiq for her visit to Moscow in 2013, where she was photographed alongside her aunt and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a signing of a Russia-Bangladesh arms deal and the opening of the Rooppur nuclear power plant.

Magnus said he accepted the MP’s reason for being in Moscow at the time was to visit family, but noted that “this visit may form part of investigations in Bangladesh”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, second right, and Tulip Siddiq, left, attend a signing ceremony in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, January 15, 2013 [Mikhail Metzel/Pool/AP]

What has Siddiq said?

In her resignation letter to Starmer, which she posted on X on Tuesday, Siddiq said that while it had been found that she had not breached the ministerial code, it remained “clear” that the matter would continue to be a “distraction from the work of the government”.

“My loyalty is and always will be to this Labour government and the programme of national renewal and transformation it has embarked on,” she wrote.

An independent review has confirmed that I have not breached the Ministerial Code and there is no evidence to suggest I have acted improperly.

Nonetheless, to avoid distraction for the Government, I have resigned as City Minister.

Here is my full letter to the Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/kZeWZfEsei

— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) January 14, 2025

What has Prime Minister Keir Starmer said?

In response to Siddiq’s letter, Starmer thanked her for her work and said “no evidence of financial improprieties on your part” had been found.

“I appreciate that to end ongoing distraction from delivering our agenda to change Britain, you have made a difficult decision and want to be clear that the door remains open for you going forward,” he added.

Starmer appointed Emma Reynolds, previously a pensions minister, to Siddiq’s role.

How have Bangladeshi authorities responded?

In a statement on Wednesday, the press office of Bangladesh’s interim government head, Muhammad Yunus, said Siddiq may not have “fully understood the origins of the money and properties she enjoyed in London”.

“However, now that she knows, she should seek forgiveness from the people of Bangladesh,” the statement added.

Siddiq’s aunt, former Prime Minister Hasina, 77, was overthrown as leader of the country after a mass student-led protest in August against a government job quota scheme that flared into nationwide unrest last year.

Protesters also called for her removal after she was accused of silencing dissenting voices through forced disappearances, an allegation which Hasina has rejected.

The former leader fled to neighbouring India.

What response has there been in the UK to Siddiq’s resignation?

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch wrote on X that it was “clear at the weekend that the anti-corruption minister’s position was completely untenable. Yet Keir Starmer dithered and delayed to protect his close friend.”

“Even now, as Bangladesh files a criminal case against Tulip Siddiq, he expresses ‘sadness’ at her inevitable resignation. Weak leadership from a weak Prime Minister,” she added on X.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp added that Starmer was “far too slow to act in this case”.

“The independent adviser’s report says there is still a number of unanswered questions about the origin of some of these extremely expensive properties that Siddiq somehow purchased,” Philp said, according to the BBC.

He added that Siddiq’s initial appointment as treasury minister “casts doubt on the Prime Minister’s judgement” and called for further investigation.

One unnamed Labour MP told The Guardian that Siddiq’s resignation was an “own goal”.

“Everybody knew she was a member of Bangladesh’s political dynasty with links to huge power and money. Who on Earth thought it was a good idea drawing attention to all that by giving her that job?” they said.