Former City Minister Tulip Siddiq has been sentenced to a two-year prison term by a Bangladeshi court after being convicted on corruption charges.
The 43-year-old Labour MP was accused of improperly influencing her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, who had been removed from office.
Allegations suggested that Siddiq sought to acquire a piece of land on the outskirts of Dhaka for her family, though she has vehemently denied these claims.
Siddiq was sentenced in absentia along with 16 others and received a fine of 100,000 Bangladeshi Taka, approximately £620, imposed by Judge Rabiul Alam.
Failure to pay the fine could result in an additional six months being added to Siddiq’s sentence.
Earlier this year, Siddiq resigned from her role as the government’s anti-corruption minister due to these allegations.
Political observers in Bangladesh had thought she was ‘highly likely’ to be convicted, as her aunt, Hasina, 78, was found guilty in the same case last week and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Ms Siddiq has always denied the charges, accusing the Bangladeshi authorities of mounting a political witch-hunt against her.
Former City Minister Tulip Siddiq is likely to face a 10-year prison sentence on Monday if she is found guilty in a high-profile corruption trial in her native Bangladesh
Ms Siddiq’s aunt Sheikh Hasina (pictured in 2023) was found guilty in the same case last Thursday and sentenced to 23 years in prison
But today’s sentencing means the MP for Hampstead and Highgate is likely to face renewed calls to stand down as a parliamentarian.
Most of the 17 accused – among them Sheikh Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana – were absent when the judgment was pronounced.
Last week, prominent British lawyers and former ministers, led by Cherie Blair KC, signed a joint letter where they said the trial against Ms Siddiq was ‘contrived and unfair.’
The letter, sent to the Bangladesh High Commissioner to the UK, Abida Islam, added: ‘She [Siddiq] is being tried in her absence without justification and that the proceedings fall far short of standards of fairness recognised internationally.’
Mrs Blair and her co-signatories said: ‘A lawyer in Bangladesh she appointed to represent her was forced to stand down, reporting that he had been placed under house arrest, further informing Ms Siddiq that his daughter had been threatened.’
Ms Siddiq resigned from her position as Economic Secretary to the Treasury after the Daily Mail revealed in December she was being investigated in Bangladesh in a £4billion bribery case.
She and members of her family were accused of siphoning off £4billion from a Russian-built nuclear power plant deal, a claim Ms Siddiq has always denied.
Weeks later, the Mail on Sunday revealed how she lied to the newspaper three years earlier when she told its reporters her parents bought her a flat in London’s King’s Cross, when in fact it was gifted to her by a political ally of her aunt.
Last month Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death
Labour MP Tulip Siddiq (left) at the Kremlin in 2013 with her aunt, Sheikh Hasina
An inquiry by the independent watchdog on Ministerial Standards, Sir Lauri Magnus, said Ms Siddiq did not breach the Minister Code, but should have been more alert to the ‘reputational risks’ from her ‘close family’s association with Bangladesh.’
Neither Mrs Blair nor Mr Buckland responded to the MoS, but Mr Grieve said: ‘The letter was based on credible information and evidence made available to us. I have nothing to add about the matter.’
Ms Siddiq declined to comment on the trial or the letter.
Britain does not currently have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh.
Last month Sheikh Hasina was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death.
She was tried in her absence as she has been living in exile in India since being forced from power.
Reacting to the verdict, she said: ‘The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate.
‘They are biased and politically motivated. In their distasteful call for the death penalty, they reveal the brazen and murderous intent of extremist figures within the interim government to remove Bangladesh’s last elected prime minister.’
A three-judge bench of the country’s international crimes tribunal convicted Hasina of crimes including murder, extermination, torture and other inhumane acts.
Reading the verdict to the court, Justice Golam Mortuza Mozumder said the ‘accused prime minister committed crimes against humanity by her order to use drones, helicopters and lethal weapons’.
Hasina had pleaded not guilty to the charges and alleged the tribunal was a ‘politically motivated charade’.
According to a United Nations report, up to 1,400 people may have been killed during the protests between July 15 and August 5, 2024, with thousands more injured – most of them by gunfire from security forces – in what was the worst violence in Bangladesh since its 1971 war of independence.
During the trial, prosecutors told the court they had uncovered evidence of Hasina’s direct command to use lethal force to suppress the student-led uprising.
The court said the attacks during the protests last year were ‘directed against the civilian population’, and ‘widespread and systematic’.
