Former British Anti-Corruption Minister Sentenced to Two Years For Corruption in Bangladesh

UK Parliamentarian Tulip Siddiq has been sentenced in absentia for what a Bangladeshi court said was her role in a corruption plot with her aunt, the deposed Prime Minister of that country.

The ruling of Bangladesh’s Special Judge’s Court that she had used family connections and her position as a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom to acquire plots of land in a corruption scheme should be “treated with contempt”, the UK’s former counter-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq said after she was sentenced to two years in prison and a fine.

In addition to denying the charges, Siddiq even denies being a Bangladeshi citizen, although the Dhaka court said it had records of her national tax number, identity papers, and passport.

Regardless, Siddiq lives in the United Kingdom and London has no extradition treaty with Bangladesh, making it extremely unlikely Siddiq would ever serve the sentence.

The court sentenced Siddiq after finding she had been guilty of “manipulating and influencing” former Bangladeshi Prime Minister and her maternal aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who has been sentenced to death. Hasina also lives outside of Bangladesh, having fled to India last year after her government was brought down amid protests. The Daily Telegraph reports the judge in Siddiq’s case said the prosecution had established “beyond doubt that Ms Tulip Siddiq as British MP used her influence” on Hasina to acquire plots of land for her family members in Bangladesh.

Siddiq is said to be treating the conviction as a matter of lawfare, and said of the sentence: “This whole process has been flawed and farcical from the beginning to the end. The outcome of this kangaroo court is as predictable as it is unjustified.

“I hope this so called ‘verdict’ will be treated with the contempt it deserves. My focus has always been my constituents in Hampstead and Highgate and I refuse to be distracted by the dirty politics of Bangladesh.”

While it is the law that any British parliamentarian jailed for over 12 months can be removed from power, this only applies to convictions in the United Kingdom, so the Bangladesh ruling has no bearing on Siddiq’s eligibility to stand for office.

Siddiq had been the anti-corruption minister in the British government of Sir Keir Starmer until earlier this year when she stood down over her being named in the Bangladesh corruption probe. As reported at the time, Siddiq had allegedly used her influence to get land for members of her family was something of an inversion of previous claims about her probity, namely that she had been the beneficiary of property owned by members of her powerful Bangladeshi family and connections in London.

Following an investigation by Starmer’s ethics advisor into years of claims about Siddiq’s use of expensive London properties gifted or owned by her aunt’s political allies, it was stated there had been an “unfortunate misunderstanding” which led to the public having been “inadvertently misled” about the origin of the ownership of a flat in King’s Cross.

It was also revealed that although Siddiq had sought to distance herself from the now-former despotic regime of her aunt Hasina in Bangladesh, when the regime collapsed, Labour party campaign literature for Siddiq had been found in Hasina’s abandoned Dhaka palace.