Bangladesh’s ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina embezzled more than $5 billion (Taka 59,000 crore) from Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant. His son Sajib Wazed Joy and niece Tulip Siddique assisted in this work.
Such sensational information emerged in a report published by Global Defense Corp on Saturday (August 17).
According to the report, Sheikh Hasina and her family members embezzled more than $5 billion to buy Soviet-era nuclear reactors from Russia’s Rosatom. The construction cost of the power plant is $12.65 billion.
Rosatom, the project implementation agency, assisted Sheikh Hasina in transferring this $5 billion from various Russian slash funds kept in Malaysian banks to various banks. Sajib Wazed Joy and niece Tulip Siddique mediated.
The largest and most expensive project in the country is Rooppur nuclear power plant. It is expected that after its full implementation, it will meet 20 percent of the country’s electricity demand. Recently, the Global Defense Corporation published a report based on its own research on this matter.
The report also said that the cost of construction of the power plant with the help of Russia is estimated at 1 thousand 265 million dollars. Which is much more than needed. Rosatom, the project implementing agency, gave Sheikh Hasina the opportunity to embezzle 5 billion dollars from this budget through a Malaysian bank.
The then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made this agreement with Russia through the mediation of her niece Tulip Siddique. Tulip, Sheikh Rehana and some family members received 30 percent of the money smuggled in exchange for this mediation.
Tulip Siddique was the companion of Sheikh Hasina during her meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013. According to Global Defense Corp, he also mediated the Dhaka-Moscow billion dollar arms deal at that time.
Tulip Siddique, her mother Sheikh Rehana and uncle Tariq Ahmed Siddique, the then Prime Minister’s Defense Advisor, launched a fake company named ‘Prachhaya Limited’ in 2009. They also have a company called ‘Jumana Investment’ in the United States.
Global Defense Corp says that Sheikh Hasina used to launder money to offshore accounts of various countries through this company. Their company has been associated with a cheating fund company called Destiny Group and has smuggled about 900 million dollars to various countries including the United Kingdom.
The Global Defense Corp report also says that democracy in developing countries like Bangladesh is gradually held hostage by corrupt dictatorships. In a research report published on 23 March 2018, the German think tank Bertelsmann Stiftung listed Bangladesh as an ‘authoritarian regime’. Various institutions, including the judiciary, became mere puppets due to the harsh intervention of autocratic rulers.
When Tulip Siddiq of the UK Labor Party won the election in 2015, her aunt Sheikh Hasina proudly told the country’s parliament how her niece had defeated Western rivals and won the election. The Prime Minister mentioned in Parliament that her younger sister Sheikh Rehana (Tulip’s mother) is a British citizen, who lives in the UK and is suffering from financial hardship. Unable to afford a private car, Sheikh Rehana commutes to work by bus.
Tulip Siddiq was in London to facilitate the negotiation of a bribe from Rosatom to Sheikh Hasina before finalizing the deal to build a nuclear power plant at Rooppur. According to the report, Tulip did not give this service for free! Since January 2009, Ma Sheikh Rehana and several members of Bangladesh’s ruling family have received 30 percent ‘bribes’ from the Russians and the entire amount has been secretly deposited into various offshore bank accounts in Malaysia.
Incidentally, the portal called Global Defense Corp was launched in 2018. They investigate corruption in the military and defense sector of different countries. The report on Rooppur nuclear power plant has also revealed information related to corruption before the project.