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Shaheen Siddique, the aunt of UK anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq, was turned away in 2013 by Henley & Companions, which then had unique rights to manage Malta’s citizenship-by-investment programme.
The immigration consultancy rejected Shaheen’s software for a Maltese passport, noting her hyperlinks to an organization accused by Bangladeshi media shops of “illegally acquiring beneficial authorities lands in [the Bangladesh capital] Dhaka”, based on the paperwork seen by the Monetary Occasions.
Shaheen is the spouse of Tarique Ahmed Siddique, a military officer who served as Sheikh Hasina’s safety adviser. The Bangladeshi authorities froze Tarique and Shaheen’s financial institution accounts in October final 12 months after student-led protests ended Sheikh Hasina’s 16-year rule.
The passport software paperwork comprise particulars of how Tarique’s household, which is now on the centre of considerations about kleptocracy below Sheikh Hasina’s rule, organized its affairs.
The Henley choice refers to allegations from 2012 that an organization referred to as Prochhaya, chaired by Shaheen, seized beneficial land in Dhaka. Shaheen listed her function at Prochhaya in her 2013 passport software.
Critics of Sheikh Hasina’s authorities had claimed that Tarique, who was Sheikh Hasina’s army adviser from 2009 till the autumn of the federal government final 12 months, used the nation’s safety forces to occupy the land for Prochhaya. The corporate in 2016 offered the land.
The paperwork present Shaheen made two purposes for a Maltese passport in 2013 and 2015. The second was a joint software together with her London-based daughter Bushra, who’s the primary cousin of Tulip Siddiq, the UK’s Metropolis minister holding accountability for tackling illicit finance. Bushra was a director of Prochhaya, based on a 2011 submitting.
In line with the paperwork for the joint software in March 2015, Maltese citizenship would value €650,000 for Shaheen and €25,000 for Bushra; as well as Henley would take a €70,000 payment.
As half of that software, Shaheen offered a press release from a dollar-denominated checking account in Kuala Lumpur displaying a stability of $2,760,409 as proof of funds. The money had been deposited over the earlier two months in 11 transactions. The origin is just not specified within the doc.
Iftekharuzzaman, an government director of Transparency Worldwide Bangladesh, mentioned that forex guidelines in Bangladesh forestall folks from taking greater than $12,000 out of the nation in a calendar 12 months.
Bushra, who was learning in London on a pupil visa, gave her tackle on the time as a second-floor flat within the grand Gothic constructing that towers above St Pancras station in central London.
This property was a couple of minutes stroll from her cousin Tulip’s King’s Cross flat, which Tulip was given by a British Bangladeshi businessman without spending a dime in 2004, the FT previously reported.
The primary passport software in 2013, by Shaheen alone, was rejected outright by Henley. An inside e mail said this was as a result of revealed information tales instructed she had “an affiliation with cash laundering, corruption, fraud & bribery” in relation to Prochhaya.
Within the subsequent passport software, made collectively together with her daughter two years later, Shaheen makes no point out of Prochhaya. As an alternative, she lists her firm as “The Artwork Press Pvt Ltd” in Chattogram, southern Bangladesh.
This time, a Henley worker mentioned in an inside e mail that “while no antagonistic info has been recognized”, the Maltese authorities wanted extra details about the corporate.
In reply, one other worker mentioned that the Artwork Press was a “enterprise began by Mrs. Shaheen Siddique grandfather within the 12 months 1926 . . . The Firm’s most important enterprise at the moment was ‘printing’ . . . Mrs Shaheen’s place within the firm is Managing Director (since 2013).”
Within the final of the leaked paperwork from late 2015, Shaheen is on a listing of shoppers headed “Functions Cancelled and/or Rejected”. Malta’s official gazette confirms that neither Shaheen nor Bushra acquired a passport.
Bushra stayed within the UK after her research. Shortly after she graduated from College Faculty London, she joined funding financial institution JPMorgan earlier than quitting to turn out to be a “life-style, style and journey” influencer in 2018.
In an interview on YouTube final 12 months, Bushra mentioned that she determined to give up her job on the funding financial institution after “struggling” for a interval. She resigned, she mentioned, regardless of her father being proud that he was capable of say his daughter labored at an esteemed American financial institution.
“I come from a privileged place . . . I used to be really married again then so I did have a husband. I didn’t have to fret a few roof over my head if I had any person who was there to cowl the hire,” she mentioned.
In 2018, Bushra bought a five-bedroom home in Golders Inexperienced, North London, for £1.9mn collectively together with her husband. Land Registry filings present that the property has no mortgage in opposition to it.
“I had financial savings and if my financial savings ran out I knew my mother and father had been there . . . ,” Bushra added on YouTube.
Bushra Siddique and Shaheen Siddique didn’t reply to a request for remark. Henley confirmed that that they had not acquired passports. Tarique Ahmed Siddique, for whom an arrest warrant was issued this week by Bangladesh’s Worldwide Crimes Tribunal referring to enforced disappearances, couldn’t be instantly contacted for remark.
