A London councillor is being paid over £20,000 in taxpayer-funded allowances while based 5,000 miles away in Bangladesh, the Daily Mail has learned.
Sabina Khan was elected to serve Tower Hamlets in east London but for the last eight months has been staying in Sylhet in the Asian country.
Ms Khan – who was elected to represent Labour before defecting to the controversial Aspire party – is intending to continue to serve until coming elections in May when she will step down.
The reason for her ongoing relocation appears to be her ambition to become a full MP in Bangladesh – and she is said to have notified her party and the council’s monitoring officer here about her movements.
Tower Hamlets confirmed Khan earns £11,898 a year as a councillor and an additional £8,702 as Scrutiny Lead for Resources, a role which requires her to closely examine council spending, a total of £20,600 annually.
Since first travelling to Bangladesh last May she is understood to have spent most of her time in the country, and barring one or two appearances in person has either dialed in to council and committee meetings, sent a proxy representative to sit in on her behalf or missed them entirely.
Her decision to stay in post until May means Khan will have taken home a whole year of allowances despite being based mostly in Asia.
Sources at Tower Hamlets have branded the situation a ‘scandal’ adding it was ‘staggering’ that she hasn’t been forced to resign with immediate effect.
Sabina Khan (pictured) was elected to serve Tower Hamlets in east London but for the last eight months has been staying in Sylhet in the Asian country
Ms Khan (pictured) – who was elected to represent Labour before defecting to the controversial Aspire party – is intending to continue to serve until coming elections in May when she will step down
The reason for her ongoing relocation appears to be her ambition to become a full MP in Bangladesh – and she is said to have notified her party and the council’s monitoring officer here about her movements. Pictured: Ms Khan with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband
One council source told us: ‘When she has joined meetings online you can see where she is – on her balcony in Bangladesh. It’s scandalous.’
Ms Khan is understood to have gone to the Asian country – with which, like many of her London constituents, she has family connections – in an attempt to get adopted as a parliamentary candidate.
She was joined in this by fellow Tower Hamlets councillor Ohid Ahmed as both launched campaigns to represent the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) as MPs – something which is legal under the UK electoral system.
Videos shared on Khan’s various social media channels shows her speaking at various BNP rallies and leafleting in Sylhet throughout December and January in the run up to the general election on February 12.
The election will be the first since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the aunt of Labour MP Tulip Siddiq, was ousted from power in a student-led uprising.
Both London councillors were unsuccessful in the first round of selections and Mr Ahmed is understood to have returned to London and resumed his usual duties.
But Ms Khan, who represents a ward in Mile End, still has hopes of getting onto a second candidates shortlist for women and minority groups and so is continuing to campaign in the north eastern region of Sylhet.
Communities Secretary Steve Reed has said he was ‘appalled’ Ms Khan would ‘abandon [her] commitment’ to local residents while Tower Hamlets was engulfed in a catalogue of fraud scandals.
One video shows Khan bemoaning the cost of cooking gas in Bangladesh.
Ms Khan (pictured, her profile on the council website) is understood to have gone to the Asian country – with which, like many of her London constituents, she has family connections – in an attempt to get adopted as a parliamentary candidate
A critic at Tower Hamlets has pointed out that her £20,600 package is ten times the average £1,961 annual wage in Bangladesh – equivalent to someone earning £390,400-a-year in Britain.
While receiving taxpayers’ money in the UK, she also lambasted the sitting Bangladeshi government, saying: ‘The money they spend, it’s not their own. That’s the hard earned money of the people’.
Another clip on her YouTube channel shows Khan on a bridge in Sylhet complaining about potholes.
Tower Hamlets was this month awarded an amber rating – requiring significant improvement – for its own pothole management.
When challenged about her conduct last November, Ms Khan said she had stepped down from her Tower Hamlets role to ‘dedicate myself fully to public service in Bangladesh’.
And she said her resignation had been accepted by Aspire and Tower Hamlets’ monitoring officer.
Speaking to Bangladesh’s The Daily Star, she said: ‘It is not unlawful under UK law for a councillor to engage in political activity abroad.
‘I have continued to serve my constituents remotely and returned when required. Nonetheless, I have now stepped down to dedicate myself fully to public service in Bangladesh.’
But it later emerged that Tower Hamlets had never received Khan’s resignation and she then appeared at a one off council meeting later that month.
One councillor said: ‘It’s staggering. It is unfair on everybody, I think she should have done the decent thing and gone. She should resign, she frankly cannot do it from Bangladesh.
‘I know what it’s like at Tower Hamlets, with harrowing stories of casework. People come to see you, you can’t do it from abroad, you have got to sit there and see people. You can’t do casework by Microsoft Teams, I’m sorry it’s ridiculous!’
Khan had previously served as a Labour councillor on Brent Council in West London where she was criticised for not living in the borough.
In 2022 she was elected as a Labour councillor in Tower Hamlets but in November 2024, alongside another councillor, she defected to Aspire in controversial circumstances.
The defections gave Aspire overall control of Tower Hamlets council.
Examination of Ms Khan’s regular social media posts suggests she has been staying in Bangladesh for most of the last 8 months, breaking off for trips back to London last June for Eid-al-Adha and again in September and to Mecca for Umrah for two days in October.
One clip (pictured) on her YouTube channel shows Khan on a bridge in Sylhet complaining about potholes
Tower Hamlets, which is controlled by Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire Party, has long been dogged with corruption and mismanagement claims.
Rahman was banned from public office for five years in 2015 after being found to have won the previous year’s election with the help of ‘corrupt and illegal practices’.
Despite this Rahman was re-elected Mayor in May 2022.
Sabina Khan, Ohid Ahmed and the Aspire Party did not respond to our requests for comment.
Tower Hamlets was also approached for comment.
