LONDON — British MP Tulip Siddiq has been handed a two-year prison sentence in Bangladesh in her absence following a corruption trial she did not attend. Siddiq, a former U.K. minister, was found guilty of influencing her aunt, Bangladesh’s ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, to secure a plot of land for her family in the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, according to a BBC report of the trial. Siddiq, a former U.K. Treasury minister, has strongly denied the claims and is unlikely to serve the sentence. She is based in London and is the MP for the London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate. The case is one of a number launched by prosecutors against Hasina and her family in Bangladesh. Hasina fled the country last year after more than a decade in charge. The ex-PM was sentenced to death in a separate trial a fortnight ago. Siddiq quit as a  Treasury minister in January following multiple media reports — heavily disputed by Siddiq — that she benefited from her family’s rule of Bangladesh. She said she did not want to be a “distraction” for the government. In a statement at the start of the trial, Siddiq said prosecutors had “peddled false and vexatious allegations that have been briefed to the media but never formally put to me by investigators,” and insisted she had “done nothing wrong.” “Continuing to smear my name to score political points is both baseless and damaging,” she added. A group of senior lawyers, including Britain’s ex-Justice secretary Robert Buckland, former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, and Cherie Blair, a human rights lawyer and wife of former prime minister Tony Blair, last week said the trial had been “contrived and unfair.” The U.K. does not have an extradition treaty in place with Bangladesh. In a fresh statement Monday morning, Siddiq slammed what she called a “flawed and farcical” legal process. “The outcome of this kangaroo court is as predictable as it is unjustified,” she said. “I hope this so called ‘verdict’ will be treated with the contempt it deserves. My focus has always been my constituents in Hampstead and Highgate and I refuse to be distracted by the dirty politics of Bangladesh.”

LONDON — The U.K.’s growth forecast got an upgrade Tuesday as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) handed some rare good news to Chancellor Rachel Reeves a week out from her first government-wide budget. In its latest world economic outlook and financial stability report, the IMF revised Britain’s GDP growth to 1.1 percent this year — up from 0.7 percent in its July projection. The revised 2024 growth forecast puts the U.K. ahead of Germany, Italy and Japan, and equal with France. Predicted GDP growth for 2025 is unchanged at 1.5 percent. “Growth is projected to have accelerated to 1.1 percent in 2024 and is expected to continue doing so to 1.5 percent in 2025 as falling inflation and interest rates stimulate domestic demand,” the IMF said in its report.  The IMF’s report echoes a forecast from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s, which in September revised Britain’s GDP growth for 2024 to 1.1 percent, up from 0.4 percent in its previous May projection. However, the latest U.K. growth projections are still far below global output, which the IMF predicts will hold steady at 3.2 percent in 2024 and 2025. The new IMF figures come a week after better-than-expected inflation figures for the U.K. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) data put the U.K.’s rate of inflation at 1.7 percent on an annual basis to September, down from 2.2 percent the month before.  Both metrics are a boost to U.K. Chancellor Reeves, who will unveil her first budget in just over a week’s time on Oct. 30, and who has pledged to ensure the U.K. has the highest sustained growth in the G7 by the end of this parliament. However, official U.K. public sector borrowing figures for September show the scale of the challenge facing the country’s new finance minister, who has accused the previous Conservative administration of leaving a “black hole” in U.K. tax-and-spend plans. According to figures published Tuesday by the ONS, the government borrowed £16.6 billion last month. That’s the highest amount since the Covid-19 pandemic and above the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March forecast. Public sector pay rises and debt interest payments were the biggest drivers, the ONS said on Tuesday morning. “It’s welcome that the IMF have upgraded our growth forecast for this year, but I know there is more work to do,” Reeves said in a statement. “That is why the budget next week will be about fixing the foundations to deliver change, so we can protect working people, fix the NHS and rebuild Britain.”