“There’s no extradition treaty, I looked that up myself actually,” says Tulip Siddiq, the MP for Hampstead and Highgate and a Treasury minister until her resignation in January.
Just over a week ago, Siddiq, 42, a Keir Starmer loyalist, learned via a journalist who had contacted her lawyer that she had been formally indicted in Bangladesh for corruption.
She has been charged with using her influence as the niece of Sheikh Hasina, the ousted prime minister of the south Asian country, to secure a plot of land for her mother, brother and sister in Purbachal in Dhaka, the capital. “Completely absurd,” Siddiq says in her first interview about the saga.
A trial date has been set for 11 August for her and more than 20 others. Could she make an appearance in person or by videolink?
“I’m taking advice from Hugo Keith KC, who’s advising me on what my next steps are,” she says. “I’m yet to see an official summons … I mean, I’m supposedly days away from a showcase trial in a foreign country, and I still don’t know what the charges are against me. I feel a bit like I’m trapped in this Kafkaesque nightmare where I’ve been put on trial and I genuinely haven’t found out what the allegations are and what the trial is about.”
The Bangladeshi authorities have said that they will try Siddiq in absentia if necessary. The position on extradition between Bangladesh and the UK may yet be tested if there is a conviction.
For a few months last year, after Labour’s victory in the July general election, Siddiq, a veteran of the party who was a councillor before becoming an MP, was in her element.
Appointed by Starmer – a friend whose constituency neighbours her own – as economic secretary to the Treasury and City minister, she got stuck into a review of the financial services. “I loved it, and I was good at it,” she says.
Five thousand miles away, after 15 years in power, her aunt’s regime was falling apart in the face of student-led protests.
Demonstrators filled the streets in Dhaka to protest against Sheikh Hasina’s regime. Photograph: Fatima Tuj Johora/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
After an outcry over the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people demonstrating against what they said was an increasingly autocratic and cruel administration, Hasina and Siddiq’s mother, Sheikh Rehana, who was in the country at the time, fled the Bangladeshi capital in a military helicopter to India.
It was, Siddiq admits, a scary time. Hasina’s entire family, apart from her husband, children and sister, were murdered during the 15 August 1975 Bangladeshi coup d’état in which Siddiq’s grandfather, the first president of Bangladesh, was assassinated.
But, in the summer of 2025, life for Siddiq and her husband, Chris Percy, a strategic consultant, and their two children carried on as normal. “I’m not here to defend my aunt,” she says. “I know there’s an investigation going on about how her term in government ended. And I really hope the people of Bangladesh get the closure that they want.”
It was only at the end of last year, with a new government established in Dhaka under Muhammad Yunus, an economist and the bitterest of rivals to Hasina, that what Siddiq describes as the “dirty politics” of Bangladesh turned her life on its head.
Mohammad Yunus, a bitter rival to Sheikh Hasina, succeeded her as prime minister of Bangladesh. Siddiq says the ‘dirty politics’ of his regime turned her life on its head. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Guardian
Stories started to appear on obscure websites accusing her of embezzling $5bn from a deal made by her aunt with a Russian company to build the Rooppur nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.
A photograph from 2013 of a smiling Siddiq with her aunt and Vladimir Putin in Moscow offered a fresh whiff of impropriety.
“My aunt went on a state visit to Russia, and my sister and I decided to travel from London to go see her in Russia,” she says. “I was not involved in any sort of political discussions. We were sightseeing, and we were having a good time, just going to restaurants, shopping. Then on the last day, all the politicians who were there, their families were invited to a tea and reception, and a photo was taken. I met Putin for two minutes.”
A photograph from 2013 of Siddiq with her aunt and Vladimir Putin resurfaced last year as stories started to appear that accused Siddiq of embezzling $5bn. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/AP
A new story emerged that Siddiq had been gifted a flat in King’s Cross in 2004 by “an associate of people linked” to her aunt’s political party, the Awami League.
The flat’s former owner, her godfather, was not political or known to her aunt and “much to my dismay, he’s never voted”, she says.
The problem for her was that two years previously she had told an enquiring newspaper that her parents had bought the flat for her.
It was a mistake, grounded in the failing memory of her elderly parents, who separated a quarter of a century ago, she says.
New questions were then raised as to why she was living in a house owned by a Bangladeshi-heritage property developer who she says she met through the Labour party, when she owns a home in Cricklewood.
Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh with her sister, Siddiq’s mother, for India, after an outcry at the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of protesters. Photograph: Monirul Alam/EPA
It was because she had been warned of a security threat, she says. A man being held on terrorism charges had suggested that Siddiq was the reason for his plight.
It was the year the Tory MP David Amess had been murdered at work. She had been advised to move out and had relied on someone she knew due to the suddenness of it all.
She was paying full market rent but mud was flying, often thrown from the authorities in Bangladesh. Some of it was starting to stick. Siddiq referred herself to Sir Laurie Magnus, the independent adviser on ministerial standards.
After two weeks of “intense” daily meetings going through Siddiq’s finances, Magnus cleared her of breaking the ministerial code.
He added that it was “regrettable that she was not more alert to the potential reputational risks” that arose from her familial ties and her government role.
The line is evidently irritating to her. “I can’t help who my aunt is at the end of the day,” she says. “It is a strange line because it is a bit like saying you should have been aware of your birth and how you were born.”
She resigned in order to stop the story from being a distraction for the government despite Starmer’s continued support, she says.
Siddiq resigned from Keir Starmer’s government to stop herself being a distraction as allegations continued to be made against her. Photograph: UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor/PA
He made it clear that she could return one day. “He did make a joke and say, ‘In the previous administration, even people who had broken the ministerial code still stayed on, you know that?’”
But allegations have continued to fly and Siddiq’s lawyers’ attempts to get clarity have not been rewarded, she says.
There is certainly scant evidence of a renewed Bangladesh since Hasina’s regime fell. The promised elections are yet to happen. Lawyers at Doughty chambers have been compiling evidence of abuses for the international criminal court, including “unprovoked and violent attacks against journalists, police officers, minorities and those connected with the former government party, the Awami League”.
Siddiq tried to meet Yunus during his visit to the UK this year. He dismissed it, saying it would prejudice the judicial process. Meanwhile, the UK’s serious and organised crime agency has frozen almost £90m of London property belonging to two men linked to Hasina, including one property in which Siddiq’s mother lived and still has possessions. Nothing to do with her, Siddiq says.
“The truth is that I’m collateral damage, because of this feud between Muhammad Yunus and my aunt,” she says. “These are wider forces that I’m battling against … There’s no doubt people have done wrong things in Bangladesh, and they should be punished for it. It’s just I’m not one of them.”