The former British minister is being tried over an alleged land grab of plots in the capital, Dhaka.
Bangladeshi anticorruption officials have testified in court against former British Minister Tulip Siddiq, accused of using her familial ties to deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to obtain state-owned land plots in the South Asian country.
Three officials from the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on Wednesday read out testimonies in three separate cases, over an alleged land grab of plots in the capital, Dhaka.
Siddiq, who is Hasina’s niece, resigned from her post as an anticorruption minister in United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government in January, following reports that she lived in London properties linked to her aunt and was named in an anticorruption investigation in Bangladesh.
She is being tried in the land grab case together with her mother, Sheikh Rehana, brother, Radwan Mujib, and sister, Azmina.The four were indicted earlier and asked to appear in court; however, the prosecution said they absconded and would be tried in absentia.
Siddiq has called the process a “persecution and a farce”.
ACC lawyer Khan Mohammad Mainul said Siddiq was “lying”.
“We have obtained all the necessary documents, including her correspondence in this matter,” he told the AFP news agency. “We have strong evidence against her.”
The cases are in addition to three corruption cases that opened on Monday. Hasina, 77, is named in all.
Separately, the anticorruption investigation has alleged that Siddiq’s family was involved in brokering a 2013 deal with Russia for a nuclear power plant in Bangladesh in which large sums of money were said to have been embezzled.
Siddiq represents the north London district of Hampstead and Highgate in Parliament, and served in the UK’s centre-left Labour Party government as economic secretary to the Treasury – the minister responsible for tackling financial corruption.
Hasina’s rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killing of her political opponents.
She fled Bangladesh by helicopter on August 5, 2024, after weeks of student-led protests against her rule.
She has defied orders to return from India, including to attend her separate and ongoing trial on charges amounting to crimes against humanity, over the deadly crackdown on the uprising.