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Published : 10 Feb 2025, 03:04 AM
Former UK City minister Tulip Siddiq was listed as a resident of a luxury 10-storey tower block in Dhaka’s Gulshan named after her family, British daily The Telegraph revealed amid a probe against her over a “free flat” in London.
Officials in Dhaka believed the former anti-corruption minister’s “permanent address” was the upmarket apartment complex named “Siddiques” in 2014, while she was a councillor in Camden, north London.
The property in Gulshan, home to embassies and major businesses, is the fifth in Bangladesh to be linked to Labour Party MP Tulip, either through court papers or news reports, according to the Telegraph report.
It cited sources in the Labour as saying that she does not own any properties in Bangladesh and does not need to answer questions on addresses that do not belong to her.
Nearly a month after she resigned as City minister, Tulip is still facing questions over her property affairs and links to her aunt deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her authoritarian regime in Bangladesh.
She was forced to resign from the front bench after Sir Laurie Magnus, the UK prime minister’s ethics advisor, found that she had inadvertently misled the public over a flat gifted to her by a man linked to the Awami League.
The MP had referred herself after weeks of questions over her use of properties in London linked to the Awami League.
Hasina was deposed last August in a student-led uprising and fled to India where she has been living since.
A day after it emerged Anti-Corruption Commission, or ACC, was investigating a family holiday home in Kanaiya, including a plot named “Tulip’s Territory”, The Telegraph revealed Tulip’s links to a fifth property in the country.
An official document shows the property was considered both her “current” and “permanent” address.
The document is dated three weeks after Tulip stood down as a Camden councillor in May 2014, according to the report.
The 10-storey apartment block in the upmarket Gulshan area of the capital was built in the 2010s and according to a promotional video is home to a roof terrace and two and three-bedroom properties with balconies.
The spacious flats are in contrast to the conditions facing most of the 20 million people living in Dhaka, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, the Telegraph said.
The Telegraph said it is unclear if the building is named after Tulip’s father Shafique Ahmed Siddique, her grandfather or the family in general.
But a person with knowledge of the property believed that it was built on land owned by a member of the family.
According to the report, Labour declined to answer questions about whether the family still owned any of the flats in the building or who specifically it was named after.
Tulip’s father was still listed as living there until recently according to an online biography at the university where he is a professor. He is married to Sheikh Rehana, the younger sister of Hasina.
In addition to the property named after family members, Tulip has been linked to another address in Gulshan and her aunt’s house in Dhanmondi in court papers.
The latter was set on fire and ransacked by angry protesters this week in response to a speech by Hasina, the report read.
The former UK minister also previously owned a flat in Dhaka with another family member worth more than £100,000 which was sold in 2015, according to Parliament’s Register of Interests.
