Photo: Collected
Tulip Siddiq, a UK city minister and niece of ousted Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina, lived in a property given to her family by an ally of her aunt's deposed regime in Bangladesh, reports The Sunday Times.
According to the report published on 4 January, Tulip used the flat on Finchley Road in Hampstead, north London, after it was given to her for free by her teenage sister, Azmina. The report says Moin Ghani, a Bangladeshi lawyer who has represented Hasina's government, handed the property to Azmina in 2009.
The revelation comes following a Financial Times report on 3 January, which claimed that Tulip was gifted an apartment in Central London by Abdul Motalif, a developer and an associate of individuals connected to Hasina, who was removed from power in August last year after uprisings against her rule.
According to previously unreported Land Registry filings, Tulip, current economic secretary to the Treasury, was handed a two-bedroom flat near King's Cross in 2004 without making a payment, the FT report said.
On the Hampstead flat, The Sunday Times report mentions that Land Registry documents state that the transfer of the property to Tulip was "not for money or anything that has a monetary value".
"Azmina was 18 at the time and about to begin her studies at Oxford. It is unclear exactly when Siddiq moved in to the flat, but, upon her appointment in December 2012 as a director of the Working Men's College education institute, she listed the property as her address on Companies House," the report reads.
She did the same on becoming a trustee of the Camden Arts Centre charity in January 2014 and the Hampstead Wells and Campden Trust, another non-profit, in March 2014. Her husband, Christian Percy, listed it as his address as late as May 2016, by which time Siddiq was serving as Labour MP for Hampstead & Kilburn, The Sunday Times reports.
The report says Azmina sold the residence for £650,000 in 2021. By then, Ghani, the prior owner, had spent years advising Bangladesh in international disputes. Hasina's government nominated him in 2021 for a role on a World Bank panel.
The Hampstead flat is distinct from a nearby apartment in King's Cross that, according to the Financial Times, which uncovered the asset last week, was gifted to the MP in 2004 by Abdul Motalif, another associate of Hasina's, and which Siddiq still owns. Before Siddiq acquired it, the flat was used by Ghani.
Siddiq declined to comment on the record. A source close to her told The Sunday Times that she had lived at her sister's property for a period, adding that this was normal for many families.
"The source added that other family members' housing arrangements were a matter for them, and that the political associations of others have 'nothing' to do with Siddiq," the report mentions.
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