Staff Reporter :
The wife and daughter of General Tarique Siddique, former defence adviser to ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, were denied access to Malta’s citizenship-by-investment scheme due to
allegations of money laundering, corruption, fraud, and bribery in Bangladeshi media reports.
According to the Financial Times, Shaheen Siddique, the aunt of UK Anti-Corruption Minister Tulip Siddiq, was rejected in 2013 by Henley & Partners, which at the time held exclusive rights to administer Malta’s citizenship-by-investment programme.
Henley & Partners refused Shaheen’s application for a Maltese passport due to her association with a company accused by Bangladeshi media of illegally acquiring valuable government land in Dhaka, according to documents reviewed by the FT.
Shaheen is the wife of Tarique Ahmed Siddique, a former army officer who served as Sheikh Hasina’s security adviser.
In October last year, Bangladeshi authorities froze the bank accounts of both Tarique and Shaheen following student-led protests that ended Sheikh Hasina’s 16-year rule.
Documents related to Shaheen’s passport application reveal details of how Tarique’s family, now central to concerns over kleptocracy during Sheikh Hasina’s tenure, managed its assets.
Henley & Partners’ decision referenced 2012 allegations against a company called Prochhaya, chaired by Shaheen, which reportedly seized prime land in Dhaka. Shaheen acknowledged her role in Prochhaya in her 2013 passport application.
Critics of Sheikh Hasina’s government claimed that Tarique used security forces to occupy the land on behalf of Prochhaya, which later sold the property in 2016.
Shaheen applied for a Maltese passport twice, in 2013 and 2015. The second application was a joint request with her daughter Bushra, who was based in London and is a first cousin of Tulip Siddiq, the UK’s City Minister responsible for tackling illicit finance. Bushra was listed as a director of Prochhaya in a 2011 filing.
In the March 2015 application, the cost of Maltese citizenship was outlined as €650,000 for Shaheen, €25,000 for Bushra, and €70,000 consultancy fee for Henley & Partners.
To support the application, Shaheen submitted a bank statement from a dollar-denominated account in Kuala Lumpur, showing a balance of $2,760,409. The funds had been deposited in 11 transactions over two months, though the source of the money was not specified in the documents.
Iftekharuzzaman, Executive Director of Transparency International Bangladesh, noted that Bangladesh’s currency regulations limit foreign currency transfers to $12,000 per person per year, raising concerns over the legality of the transactions.
At the time of the application, Bushra, who was studying in London on a student visa, listed her address as a second-floor flat in a grand Gothic building above St Pancras station in central London.
This property was located a few minutes’ walk from the King’s Cross flat of her cousin Tulip Siddiq, which Tulip reportedly received for free in 2004 from a British Bangladeshi businessman, as previously reported by the Financial Times.
