UK minister in Bangladesh graft probe quits govt

LONDON: Anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq resigned from the UK government on Tuesday after being named in graft probes in Bangladesh launched when her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was ousted as the country´s leader.

In a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Siddiq repeated she had done nothing wrong but said continuing in office would likely “be a distraction from the work of the government”.

Siddiq, 42, has been dogged by claims about her links to Hasina, who fled Bangladesh in August after a student-led uprising against her decades-long, increasingly authoritarian tenure as prime minister.

Family members including Siddiq had already emerged as named targets of the commission´s investigation into accusations of embezzlement of $5 billion connected to a Russian-funded nuclear power plant.

Bangladeshi money laundering investigators have since ordered the country´s big banks to hand over details of transactions relating to Siddiq as part of the probe.

In her letter of resignation, Siddiq said her “family connections were a matter of public record” and that she had acted with “full transparency”.

She insisted her “loyalty is and always will be” to the Labour government and the “programme of national renewal and transformation it has embarked upon”. “I have therefore decided to resign from my ministerial position.”

Starmer thanked Siddiq for her work and recognised that “no evidence of financial improprieties on your part” had been found.