A close ally of ousted leader of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina was denied access to a Maltese citizenship scheme because they had been accused in media reports of “money laundering, corruption, fraud & bribery”, leaked documents show.
Shaheen Siddique, the aunt of UK anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq, was turned away in 2013 by Henley & Partners, which then had exclusive rights to administer Malta’s citizenship-by-investment programme.
The immigration consultancy rejected Shaheen’s application for a Maltese passport, noting her links to a company accused by Bangladeshi media outlets of “illegally obtaining valuable government lands in [the Bangladesh capital] Dhaka”, according to the documents seen by the Financial Times.
Shaheen is the wife of Tarique Ahmed Siddique, an army officer who served as Sheikh Hasina’s security adviser. The Bangladeshi authorities froze Tarique and Shaheen’s bank accounts in October last year after student-led protests ended Sheikh Hasina’s 16-year rule.
The passport application documents contain details of how Tarique’s family, which is now at the centre of concerns about kleptocracy under Sheikh Hasina’s rule, arranged its affairs.
The Henley decision refers to allegations from 2012 that a company called Prochhaya, chaired by Shaheen, seized valuable land in Dhaka. Shaheen listed her role at Prochhaya in her 2013 passport application.
Critics of Sheikh Hasina’s government had claimed that Tarique, who was Sheikh Hasina’s military adviser from 2009 until the fall of the government last year, used the country’s security forces to occupy the land for Prochhaya. The company in 2016 sold the land.
The documents show Shaheen made two applications for a Maltese passport in 2013 and 2015. The second was a joint application with her London-based daughter Bushra, who is the first cousin of Tulip Siddiq, the UK’s City minister holding responsibility for tackling illicit finance. Bushra was a director of Prochhaya, according to a 2011 filing.
According to the documents for the joint application in March 2015, Maltese citizenship would cost €650,000 for Shaheen and €25,000 for Bushra; in addition Henley would take a €70,000 fee.
As part of that application, Shaheen provided a statement from a dollar-denominated bank account in Kuala Lumpur showing a balance of $2,760,409 as proof of funds. The cash had been deposited over the previous two months in 11 transactions. The origin is not specified in the document.
Iftekharuzzaman, an executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh, said that currency rules in Bangladesh prevent people from taking more than $12,000 out of the country in a calendar year.
Bushra, who was studying in London on a student visa, gave her address at the time as a second-floor flat in the grand Gothic building that towers above St Pancras station in central London.
This property was a few minutes walk from her cousin Tulip’s King’s Cross flat, which Tulip was given by a British Bangladeshi businessman for free in 2004, the FT previously reported.
The first passport application in 2013, by Shaheen alone, was rejected outright by Henley. An internal email stated this was because published news stories suggested she had “an association with money laundering, corruption, fraud & bribery” in relation to Prochhaya.
In the next passport application, made jointly with her daughter two years later, Shaheen makes no mention of Prochhaya. Instead, she lists her company as “The Art Press Pvt Ltd” in Chattogram, southern Bangladesh.
This time, a Henley employee said in an internal email that “whilst no adverse information has been identified”, the Maltese authorities needed more information about the company.
In reply, another employee said that the Art Press was a “business started by Mrs. Shaheen Siddique grandfather in the year 1926 . . . The Company’s main business at that time was ‘printing’ . . . Mrs Shaheen’s position in the company is Managing Director (since 2013).”
In the last of the leaked documents from late 2015, Shaheen is on a list of clients headed “Applications Cancelled and/or Rejected”. Malta’s official gazette confirms that neither Shaheen nor Bushra received a passport.
Bushra stayed in the UK after her studies. Shortly after she graduated from University College London, she joined investment bank JPMorgan before quitting to become a “lifestyle, fashion and travel” influencer in 2018.
In an interview on YouTube last year, Bushra said that she decided to quit her job at the investment bank after “struggling” for a period. She resigned, she said, despite her father being proud that he was able to say his daughter worked at an esteemed American bank.
“I come from a privileged position . . . I was actually married back then so I did have a husband. I didn’t have to worry about a roof over my head if I had somebody who was there to cover the rent,” she said.
In 2018, Bushra purchased a five-bedroom house in Golders Green, North London, for £1.9mn jointly with her husband. Land Registry filings show that the property has no mortgage against it.
“I had savings and if my savings ran out I knew my parents were there . . . ,” Bushra added on YouTube.
Bushra Siddique and Shaheen Siddique did not respond to a request for comment. Henley confirmed that they had not received passports. Tarique Ahmed Siddique, for whom an arrest warrant was issued this week by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal relating to enforced disappearances, could not be immediately contacted for comment.
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