Britain’s Anticorruption Minister Resigns

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain suffered a new blow on Tuesday when his anticorruption minister, Tulip Siddiq, quit her post weeks after being named in an embezzlement investigation in Bangladesh.

Ms. Siddiq, 42, is the niece of Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, who resigned last year after 15 years in power and fled the country amid a broad student-led protest movement against her repressive rule.

A junior minister in Mr. Starmer’s government, Ms. Siddiq had previously referred herself to the prime minister’s ethics adviser for investigation after questions arose over whether she had benefited financially from her ties to Ms. Hasina.

Ms. Siddiq has dismissed the allegations against her as politically motivated and insisted that she did nothing wrong. But in an official letter of resignation to Mr. Starmer on Tuesday, she wrote that the media focus on her risked diverting attention from the government’s political agenda.

{snip}

As economic secretary to the Treasury, a position she was given when the Labour Party came to power last July, Ms. Siddiq was responsible for tackling corruption in financial markets, including money laundering and illicit finance.

{snip}

Ms. Siddiq was named in December in an investigation into claims that her family had embezzled up to £3.9 billion pounds, or nearly $5 billion, from infrastructure projects in Bangladesh.

Officials of the new Bangladeshi government have accused Ms. Hasina and her associates of siphoning off billions of dollars from the country every year, bringing its economy to the verge of collapse.

Ms. Siddiq was born in London. Her father was an academic, and her mother, Sheikh Rehana, is the sister of Ms. Hasina. The two sisters were the only survivors of a 1975 military coup that massacred the rest of their family, including their father, Sheikh Mujib ur Rehman, the founding leader of Bangladesh.

{snip}