The UK’s Economic Secretary to the Treasury Tulip Siddiq is currently under investigation by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) over a nuclear power plant deal signed off by Russian President Vladamir Putin.
Siddiq was allegedly at the Kremlin in 2013 when Putin closed a £10 billion deal for Russian state-backed energy company Rosatom to build Bangladesh’s first nuclear power plant. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has backed his MP to continue in her anti-corruption role.
Sheikh Hasina, Siddiq’s aunt, was the longest serving Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She fled the country and went into self-imposed exile earlier this year following a student-led uprising. So who is she and who did she get here?
A long-time Labour campaigner
Tulip Siddiq, 42, has served as the MP for Hampstead and Highgate since 2015. She joined the Labour party aged 16. She campaigned internationally for Barack Obama’s election as US President in 2008 and was part of Ed Miliband’s campaign to be Labour leader in 2010, and
Siddiq ran for election as a councillor for Camden unsuccessfully in 2006, before becoming the first woman Bangladeshi councillor for Camden Council in 2010.
As a north London MP, Siddiq has campaigned for refugees, diversity and equal pay in the workforce, and for the freedom of her constituant Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian citizen detained in Iran between 2016 and 2022.
When Labour won the 2024 election, Prime Minister Kier Starmer made her Economic Secretary to the Treasury, a role responsible for reforming and regulating the UK’s financial services.
Siddiq was born in north London. Her mother, Sheikh Rahana gained political asylum in the UK as a young woman, after a military coup ousted her family in Bangladesh.
Who is Siddiq’s aunt Sheikh Hasina?
The MP’s maternal grandfather was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first ever President of Bangladesh. In 1975, the Bangladesh army invaded the President’s residence and assassinated the entire family — apart from Sheikh Rahana and her older sister Sheikh Hasina, who were in West Germany at the time.
Sheikh Hasina, Siddiq’s aunt, took refuge in India before being elected as President of the Bangladesh Awami League, a major political party, in 1981 and returning to her home country. She was elected and served as the President of Bangladesh twice, between 1996 and 2001, and again between 2009 and 2024.
Hasina’s successive terms made her the longest serving female head of government in the world. Her rise to power saw her hailed as an icon for democracy and she has been credited with the country’s growing economic success. However her regime has been described as increasingly authoritarian, with allegations of political arrests, disappearances and extra-judicial killings of her opponents.
She fled Bangladesh to India in a helicopter in May after a protest led by students stormed her official residence. The ACC is now investigating Hasina for corruption, which has re-surfaced Siddiq’s involvement with the nuclear deal.
What was the Putin nuclear deal?
In 2013 Hasina signed a deal with President Putin to build Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, the first nuclear power plant in Bangladesh. Russian state-backed company Rosatom has supplied the reactor and designed the critical infrastructure for the plant, which is due to go live in 2025.
Siddiq can be seen with her aunt and the Russian leader in footage taken at the Kremlin during the £10 billion deal.
The ACC is alleging that £3.9 billion of kickbacks from the energy deal were embezzled by Hasina’s family, and that Siddiq herself was “instrumental in managing the affairs and coordinating meetings with Russian government officials”.
Siddiq has "denied any involvement in the claims", per a spokesperson for Prime Minister Starmer. She previously said she was in attendance purely to be part of a “family occasion”.
Starmer has backed Siddiq to remain in post as the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and continue handling anti-corruption issues.
Have Siddiq’s family connections been questioned before?
Yes.
In 2017 Alex Thomson of Channel 4 News asked Siddiq about the disappearance of British barrister Ahmad bin Quasem in Bangladesh during her aunt’s rule. This was during the time the MP was campaigning for Nazanin’s release.
Siddiq was caught on camera making “apparently threatening” remarks to Channel 4 producer Daisy Ayliffe, who was pregnant at the time. The MP said: “Thanks for coming Daisy, hope you have a great birth, because child labour is hard!”
She later put out an apology statement, saying her comment was “an off-hand and ill-judged attempt to deal with what I felt was a hostile situation”.
