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The UK’s City minister Tulip Siddiq has resigned from her post after she became embroiled in a scandal tied to the ousted government of Bangladesh.
The close ally and friend of UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is the second minister to resign from his government since it swept to power last July.
In a letter to Starmer on Tuesday, Siddiq said her continued role as a minister was “likely to be a distraction from the work of the government”. She added: “I have therefore decided to resign from my ministerial position.”
Pensions minister Emma Reynolds will replace Siddiq as economic secretary to the Treasury.
Siddiq, whose job as a Treasury minister included tackling illicit finance, had faced pressure to quit since she was named in a corruption probe by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission in December.
The Financial Times then revealed that Siddiq was given a two-bedroom London flat in 2004 by a developer with links to the Awami League party led by her aunt, the former prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina.
The Labour MP has also lived in several other properties that are tied to the former Awami League regime. Siddiq had denied any wrongdoing and last week referred herself to Sir Laurie Magnus, the government’s independent adviser on ministerial standards.
The pressure on her intensified in recent days after Muhammad Yunus, the interim leader of Bangladesh and a Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist, told the Sunday Times that Siddiq may have benefited from “plain robbery”.
“She becomes the minister for anti-corruption and defends herself [over the London properties],” he said. “Maybe you didn’t realise it, but now you realise it. You say: ‘Sorry, I didn’t know it [at] that time, I seek forgiveness from the people that I did this and I resign.’ She’s not saying that. She’s defending herself.”
This is a developing story
