Tarique Ahmed Siddique’s wife, daughter denied Malta passport on corruption fears: Financial Times
Deposed Bangladesh Prime Minister’s security adviser Tarique Ahmed Siddique’s wife Shaheeh Siddique was denied access to a Maltese citizenship scheme twice, says a report of British media outlet Financial Times.
The couple’s daughter Bushra Siddique was also denied the passport once.
The report, Financial Times published on its website Friday morning (Bangladesh time) quoting some leaked documents.
According to those documents, Shaheeh Siddique and Bushra Siddique were denied the passport because they had been accused in media reports of “money laundering, corruption, fraud & bribery”.
The FT report says, 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 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.
Tarique, who was Sheikh Hasina’s military adviser from 2009 until the fall of the government in August last year, used the country’s security forces to occupy the land for Prochhaya, critics of Sheikh Hasina’s government had claimed.
The company in 2016 sold the land.
Shaheen applied for the Malta passport in 2013 and jointly with her daughter Bushra, first cousin of Tulip Siddique, in 2015.
Bushra was a director of Prochhaya, says the FT report, quoting a 2011 filing.
Quoting the documents for the joint application in March 2015, Financial Times report states that Maltese citizenship would cost €650,000 for Shaheen and €25,000 for Bushra; in addition Henley would take a €70,000 fee.
With 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.
Speaking about this to the FT, Transparency International Bangladesh executive director Iftekharuzzaman 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, a previous report of Financial Times said.