Tulip was given London flat by developer with links to Hasina: FT

Summary:

• Tulip Siddiq received a London flat gift in 2004
• Tulip's ties to Awami League raise corruption distancing questions
• Anti-Corruption Commission probing alleged nuclear project kickbacks
• Tulip's government role focuses on anti-money laundering and illicit finance
• Tulip reprimanded for failing to disclose rental income

Tulip Siddiq, a UK city minister and niece of ousted Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina, was given an apartment in Central London by Abdul Motalif, a developer and associate of people linked to her aunt, reports Financial Times.

According to previously unreported Land Registry filings, Tulip, current economic secretary to the Treasury, was handed a two-bedroom flat near King's Cross in 2004 without making a payment.

The King's Cross property, which Tulip still owns, was purchased in January 2001 for £195,000, said the FT report citing the filings. A neighbouring 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 [a party ousted from power in August], would be categorically wrong," a spokesperson for the minister said.

Motalif confirmed to the FT 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 Tulip'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 Tulip, of taking a cut from a Russia-backed Rooppur 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.

Tulip 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 Tulip lived in the King's Cross flat in the early 2000s and that her siblings resided in the property for several years afterwards. Tulip 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 Tulip. 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.

According to Land Registry filings, the gift of the King's Cross property was made before Tulip became an MP, meaning she was not required to make disclosures about it.

The papers show that, in 2018, Tulip extended the King's Cross property's lease for £90,000. She also bought a flat jointly with her husband for £865,000 in her London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate.

Land Registry documents indicate there is now no mortgage on either flat.

The person familiar with the matter said that five years after Tulip bought her constituency flat with her husband, he "paid off the remainder of the mortgage using solely the couple's own funds".

Tulip was reprimanded by parliament's standards commissioner last year after she failed to disclose rental income on the constituency flat.

Before becoming an MP in 2015, Tulip worked for several charities and as a consultant for Philip Gould Associates, the firm of the late Labour peer and strategist.

Muhammad Yunus, the 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 it of rigging elections, carrying out extrajudicial killings and capturing state institutions.

Sheikh Hasina last month denied she had ordered 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 Tulip, adding that she had "denied any involvement in the allegations made" about the Russia-backed nuclear power plant.

UK government officials also said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing by Tulip.

Tulip has been a Labour Party member since she was 16. But she also worked for a time within the Awami League's EU and UK "lobbying unit and election strategy team", according to a Labour blog post that has since been deleted.

UK-based affiliates of the Awami League have campaigned alongside Tulip at multiple British general elections, including the vote last year that brought Labour to power, according to people familiar with the matter.

"Had it not been for your help. I would never have been able to stand here as a British MP," Tulip told a crowd of the Awami League's supporters in 2015, shortly after she became an MP, at an event held in London to honour Sheikh Hasina.

Since 2022, Tulip has rented a £2.1 million London home owned by Abdul Karim, an executive member of the UK wing of the Awami League. She moved into the property outside her constituency after it was purchased in July 2022, according to filings. 

An ally of Tulip said that she was paying "market rates" and that the relationship between her and Karim had been declared properly to the parliamentary authorities.