Tulip Siddiq, the niece of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, had been named in an embezzlement investigation in the Asian country in December.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain suffered a new blow on Tuesday when his anticorruption minister, Tulip Siddiq, quit her post weeks after being named in an embezzlement investigation in Bangladesh.
Ms. Siddiq, 42, is the niece of Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, who resigned last year after 15 years in power and fled the country amid a broad student-led protest movement against her repressive rule.
A junior minister in Mr. Starmer’s government, Ms. Siddiq had previously referred herself to the prime minister’s ethics adviser for investigation after questions arose over whether she had benefited financially from her ties to Ms. Hasina.
Ms. Siddiq has dismissed the allegations against her as politically motivated and insisted that she did nothing wrong. But in an official letter of resignation to Mr. Starmer on Tuesday, she wrote that the media focus on her risked diverting attention from the government’s political agenda.
“I want to assure you that I acted and have continued to act with full transparency and on the advice of officials on these matters,” Ms. Siddiq wrote. “However it is clear that my continuing in my role as economic secretary to the Treasury is likely to be a distraction from the work of the government.”
As economic secretary to the Treasury, a position she was given when the Labour Party came to power last July, Ms. Siddiq was responsible for tackling corruption in financial markets, including money laundering and illicit finance.