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UK Cities Minister Tulip Siddiq is under fresh pressure to step down, with the opposition leader calling for her to be sacked after she was embroiled in a property scandal tied to the ousted Bangladesh government .

Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservatives, said Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer should remove Siddiq, whose role covers anti-corruption policy, following allegations that he benefited from assets linked to the Awami League. the party led by his aunt Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh.

“It’s time for Keir Starmer to cover Tulip Siddiq,” said Badenoch in a post on X on Saturday night. “The prime minister tried to make a big part of his commitment to standards and integrity . . . His weak leadership of Siddiq suggests that he is not as troubled by integrity as he claims.

Earlier this week, Siddiq referred himself to Sir Laurie Magnus, the government’s independent adviser on ministerial standards, after a Financial Times investigation found he given a two bedroom flat at King’s Cross in London in early 2000 by a man with links to the Awami League.

On Sunday a cabinet minister suggested that Siddiq could be sacked if the investigation found any wrongdoing. “The inquiry needs to continue,” science minister Peter Kyle told Sky’s Trevor Phillips.

“I think that’s the right way forward. I gave him all the space he needed to do. I will listen for the result, as the prime minister.

“This is a functional process, and the results of this will be maintained by the prime minister and this government, a complete contrast to what we had before.”

Siddiq insists he has done nothing wrong and Number 10 insiders say they have so far seen no evidence of any breach of the ministerial code.

The City minister also resides in several other properties tied to the former Awami League regime, which was fell last summer after a protest led by students that was initially met with violent repression by the security forces that led to the death of hundreds of civilians.

Muhammad Yunus, an economist who won the Nobel Peace Prize and the interim leader of Bangladesh, said in an interview with the Sunday Times newspaper that the assets used by Siddiq should be returned if the minister is found to have benefited from in “plain robbery”.

“He became the minister for anti-corruption and defended himself (on London properties),” he said. “Maybe you didn’t realize it, but now you do. You say: ‘Sorry, I didn’t know it (at the time), I apologize to the people that I did this and I resign.’ He didn’t say that. He was defending himself.”

It’s Siddiq named by a probe last month by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission after Sheikh Hasina’s political rivals accused her family, including Siddiq, of taking a cut from a Russian-backed nuclear power project, claiming they denied.

After taking power in August, Bangladesh’s interim government named Ahsan Mansur, a former IMF official, to lead the country’s central bank and begin clawing back the billions of dollars claimed by new leaders of the country taken from the banking system and sent abroad.

In an interview in October, Mansur told the FT An estimated Tk2tn ($16.7bn) was taken from the country following the forcible takeover of top banks by people linked to the Awami League, using methods such as fake loans and inflated payment invoices. – import.

The Financial Intelligence Unit of Bangladesh last week ordered the country’s banks to provide transaction details for all accounts involving Siddiq and his family, according to people familiar with the matter.

An ally of Siddiq said he only holds a UK bank account and does not have any accounts abroad.

Downing Street pointed to what Starmer said earlier this week when he said he had confidence in Siddiq and that he had “acted correctly by appointing himself an independent adviser”.