The sins of fathers shall be visited upon the sons—this ominous pronouncement in the Bible has now come true for Tulip Siddiq, a 42-year-old minister in the British government, but with a twist. In her case, it wasn’t her father’s sins that visited upon her but those allegedly committed by her aunt, the deposed prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina Wazed. And it cost Siddiq her job.
Slapped with a range of corruption charges by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), which forced an internal government inquiry, Siddiq has strenuously denied any wrongdoing—except that of ignorance about benefitting from dubious transactions. But she has paid the price and resigned as UK treasury minister on Tuesday, though she stressed that an independent review found she had “not breached the ministerial code”.
If the sins of aunts can impact nieces, then can daughters escape their mothers’?
Ever since Siddiq’s case hit the headlines, the spotlight has slowly but surely turned to Sheikh Hasina’s daughter, Saima Wazed, also known as Putul, who was elected regional director of the World Health Organisation’s Southeast Asia branch amid considerable controversy in February 2024. An editorial in the eminent medical journal The Lancet had earlier questioned if she was fit for the job, as she only held a master’s degree in psychology while rival aspirants were doctors with years of public health experience. The ACC has now initiated a probe into how she got the job: on her own merit or her mother’s intervention as prime minister. All eyes are now on Putul and whether she’ll be forced to follow in her cousin’s footsteps.
What does it all mean for 77-year-old Sheikh Hasina, who has been sheltering in New Delhi since fleeing Dhaka on 5 August after a violent student uprising against her 15-year continuous tenure as Bangladesh’s prime minister? There is no doubt that the charges being hurled at her, her family, and her friends are coloured by political prejudice from those now in power in Bangladesh. But some of the mud will stick. That’s the tragedy for the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—even her staunchest supporters admit her chances of ever returning to her motherland look very slim.
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Power to prosecution
Not just her niece, several other members of Sheikh Hasina’s family are also under investigation for corruption that, some estimates say, totals a mind-boggling $5 billion. The corruption case is linked to an alleged land grab in Dhaka and, more infamously, to a Russian-funded nuclear power plant. In 2013, Sheikh Hasina travelled to Moscow to seal the deal and was photographed standing beside President Valdimir Putin, Siddiq, and other members of her family. When questioned about her presence in Moscow, Siddiq tried to explain it as a family event, but the photo was impossible to dismiss.
Apart from family, powerful ministers and industry leaders—allegedly with Sheikh Hasina’s blessings or blind eye—also cost Bangladesh billions. A white paper on the economy, presented in Dhaka by a specially appointed finance committee in December, put the cost of corruption across public and private sectors at a staggering sum. Perhaps the most striking was the claim that “illicit financial outflows averaged $16 billion annually from 2009 to 2023—more than double the combined foreign aid and FDI inflows.”
Whether investigations into this immense corruption have yielded documentary evidence or not is open to debate. But for now, Chief Adviser Mohammed Yunus has made his administration’s objective clear.
“The theft of billions of dollars in public funds has left Bangladesh with a significant financial deficit,” Yunus said in a statement this week. “The funds stolen from Bangladesh belong to its people. We will continue to work with our international partners to ensure that justice is done.”
Bangladesh’s current dispensation has also moved court against Sheikh Hasina on charges of “crimes against humanity.” In October, the International Criminal Tribunal (ICT)—that she herself founded—issued an arrest warrant against her and 45 others for the deaths of an estimated 1,000 people in the violence that preceded her ouster on 5 August.
“Sheikh Hasina was at the helm of those who committed massacres, killings, and crimes against humanity in July and August,” the chief prosecutor of the ICT said at the time.
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Legacy and future in tatters
All of this adds up to a profile that’s hard to defend. The international media is now clubbing her name with dictators like Idi Amin of Uganda, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, and the recently deposed Bashar al-Assad of Syria. A recent Washington Post article quotes the French newspaper Le Monde, which, in one of its reports, calls Sheikh Hasina “India’s cumbersome guest”.
For New Delhi, watching developments in Dhaka and London brings disquiet. For Sheikh Hasina, who led her country for 15 years and saw it scale dizzying economic heights, it leaves a bitter taste. For friends and family who made the proverbial hay while the sun shone, the law may or may not eventually catch up. But hard times lie ahead. Tulip Siddiq is unlikely to find her way back into the British government any time soon.
Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
Brings disquiet for New Delhi … The effort should be to insulate an important bilateral relationship from loyalty to an old friend.