A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule.
The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital.
Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Prothom Alo newspaper reported.
Photo: AP
Siddiq, the Hampstead and Highgate member of parliament, who quit as economic secretary to the Treasury in January, was named in the arrest warrant along with more than 50 others, including her mother, Sheikh Rehana, and her brother, Radwan Siddiq, the newspaper reported.
Tulip Siddiq faces a number of allegations of corruption involving her family in Bangladesh, but Hasina’s Bangladesh Awami League said that the charges are politically motivated to destroy the reputation of the prominent family.
Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was Bangladesh’s independence leader. The nation gained independence in 1971 under his leadership after a nine-month war against Pakistan.
Hasina has been in exile in India since early August last year.
After the ouster of Hasina on Aug. 5 last year, Tulip Siddiq’s mother’s home in Dhaka’s upscale Gulshan area was looted and vandalized, and so far no police case has been filed over the incident. The BBC quoted Tulip Siddiq’s lawyers as saying that the charges against Siddiq were “politically motivated.”
Tulip Siddiq, who had been responsible for tackling corruption in financial markets, was named in December last year in an anti-corruption investigation in Bangladesh against Hasina. The investigation alleged that Tulip Siddiq’s family was involved in brokering a 2013 deal with Russia for a nuclear power plant in Bangladesh in which large sums of money were said to have been embezzled.
Tulip Siddiq quit as economic secretary to the treasury in January amid controversy. She said she had been cleared of wrongdoing, but that the issue was becoming “a distraction from the work of the government.”
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