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Tulip Siddiq, the UK's City Minister, was handed a central London apartment by someone close to the party of the recently departed Bangladeshi government.
According to previously unreported Land Registry papers, Siddiq, the Treasury's economic secretary, was given a two-bedroom flat near King's Cross in 2004 without paying for it.
According to the documents, the donor was Abdul Motalif, a developer and acquaintance of people connected to Siddiq's aunt, Bangladesh's deposed former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who leads the Awami League.
According to the records, Siddiq paid £195,000 for the King's Cross house in January 2001. He still owns it. In August, an adjacent flat in the building sold 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 spokesperson 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.
“Following financial support provided by Tulip’s parents to an acquaintance during a challenging time in his life, he subsequently transferred a property he then owned into Tulip’s ownership 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 herself from corruption allegations, having been named in a probe last month by the Anti-Corruption Commission in Bangladesh.
The Bangladeshi investigation came after a political rival of Sheikh Hasina accused her family, including Siddiq, of taking a cut from a Russia-backed nuclear power project, claims they have denied.
Members of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League are also accused of diverting funds from Bangladesh’s banking system to purchase properties in the UK, US, United Arab Emirates and Singapore. They have denied the allegations.
Siddiq holds a brief in the British government that includes responsibility for measures against money-laundering and clamping down on illicit finance.
Electoral roll data shows that Siddiq lived in the King's Cross flat in the early 2000s and that her siblings resided 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 filings show him listed as the owner of a now-dissolved small property services company.
Electoral roll data shows that he allowed Moin Ghani, a lawyer who went on to represent the government led by the Awami League and has been photographed with Sheikh Hasina, to live in the King's Cross flat before he gave it to Siddiq. Ghani did not respond to a request for comment.
The data also shows that 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 Islam both confirmed that they had been registered at the south-east London address.
Source- Financial times
