UK City Minister Tulip Siddiq was given a flat in central London by a person linked to the party of the last Bangladeshi government.
Siddiq, the economic secretary to the Treasury, was given a two-bedroom flat near King’s Cross in 2004 without making a payment, according to previously unreported Land Registry filings.
The records show that the donor was Abdul Motalif, a developer and associate of people connected to Siddiq’s aunt, the ousted former prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, who is the leader of the Awami League party.
The King’s Cross property, which Siddiq still owns, was bought in January 2001 for £195,000, the files show. A neighboring flat in the building was sold in August for £650,000.
“Any suggestion that Tulip Siddiq’s ownership of this property, or any other property is in any way linked to support for the Awami League, would be categorically wrong,” a spokesman for the minister said.
Motalif confirmed to the Financial Times in a phone call that he bought the King’s Cross property, but declined to comment on what he did with it.
“After the financial support provided by Tulip’s parents to an acquaintance during a challenging period in his life, he then transferred a property he then owned to Tulip as an act of gratitude for her parents’ support,” said a person familiar with the matter. .
Details of the gift raise fresh questions about Siddiq’s ability to distance himself from corruption allegations, which was named in an investigation last month by the Bangladesh Anti-Corruption Commission.
The Bangladesh inquiry came after a political rival of Sheikh Hasina accused her family, including Siddiq, of breaking away from a Russian-backed nuclear power project, claims they have denied.
Members of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League are also accused of diverting funds from the Bangladeshi banking system to buy properties in the UK, US, UAE and Singapore. They have denied the charges.
Siddiq holds a brief in the British government that includes responsibility for anti-money laundering and the suppression of illicit finance.
Electoral roll records show that Siddiq lived at the King’s Cross flat in the early 2000s and that her siblings lived in the property for several years afterwards. Siddiq has declared rental income from two flats in her MP’s declaration of financial interests.
Motalif, who is now 70, lives in south-east London. Companies House records show him listed as the owner of a now-dissolved small property services company.
Electoral roll records show he allowed Moin Ghani, a lawyer who went on to represent the Awami League-led government and has been pictured with Sheikh Hasina, to live in the King’s Cross flat before giving it to Siddiq. Ghani did not respond to a request for comment.
The records also show Motalif shared a residential address in south-east London with Mojibul Islam, the son of a former Awami League MP, between 2014 and 2024.
Motalif and Islami both confirmed they were registered at the south-east London address.
According to Land Registry files, the gift of the King’s Cross property was made before Siddique became an MP, meaning she was not required to make disclosures about it.
The papers show that, in 2018, Siddique extended the lease on the King’s Cross property for £90,000. She also bought a flat with her husband for £865,000 in her London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate.
Land Registry documents show there is now no mortgage on either flat.
The person familiar with the matter said that five years after Siddique bought her apartment with her husband, he “paid off the remainder of the mortgage using only the couple’s funds.”
Siddiq was reprimanded by parliament’s standards commissioner last year after she failed to disclose rental income from the constituency flat.
Before becoming an MP in 2015, Siddiq worked for several charities and as a consultant for Philip Gould Associates, the firm of the late Labor colleague and strategist.
Muhammad Yunus, head of Bangladesh’s interim government, which took power in August, has described the Awami League as “fascist”. Rival parties and human rights groups have accused him of rigging elections, carrying out extrajudicial killings and seizing state institutions.
Sheikh Hasina last month denied ordering security forces to use lethal force against protesters and claimed the allegations against her were “false propaganda”.
Downing Street said last month that UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer “has confidence” in Siddiq, adding that she had “denied any involvement in the allegations made” about the Russian-backed nuclear power plant.
UK government officials also said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing by Siddique.
Siddiq has been a member of the Labor party since she was 16 years old. But she also worked for a time within the Awami League’s “lobbying unit and election strategy team” in the EU and the UK, according to a since-deleted Labor blog post.
UK-based branches of the Awami League have campaigned alongside Siddiq in multiple British general elections, including last year’s vote that brought Labor to power, according to people familiar with the matter.
“If it wasn’t for your help. I would never have been able to stand here as a British MP,” Siddiq told a crowd of Awami League supporters in 2015, soon after she became an MP, at an event held in London to honor Sheikh Hasina.
As of 2022, Siddiq has been renting a £2.1 million house in London owned by Abdul Karim, an executive member of the UK wing of the Awami League. She moved to the property outside her constituency after it was bought in July 2022, according to the filings.
An ally of Siddiq said she was paying “market rates” and that the relationship between her and Karim had been properly declared to parliamentary authorities.
