A US court on Friday suspended arrest warrants for Bangladesh financial advisor Salehuddin Ahmed and Bangladesh Bank Governor Ahsan H Mansur.

Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey, who was recently appointed as Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh, confirmed this to the Daily Star today over telephone from Washington DC.

This development comes a day after US District Judge Carl J Nichols issued “arrest warrants against Salehuddin Ahmed and Ahsan H Mansur a power company wants to testify as it seeks to enforce a $31.9 million collective arbitration award against Bangladesh.

He ordered the US Marshals Service to arrest the two men while they were visiting Washington, DC, to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, held October 21-26.

The court had ordered the registrar to issue arrest warrants as punishment for contempt in Bangladesh.

“On Friday, the US court suspended the order. This is confirmed,” said Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey.

“The US court had no jurisdiction to issue such arrest warrants against these officials. However, thanks to the court’s stay order, the case has been stayed,” he said.

The caretaker government cannot take responsibility for the misdeeds of the previous regime, he said on Facebook, adding that those who tried to silence the issue should be punished.

Law360, a New York-based legal news publisher, reported Friday that the U.S. court’s ruling prompted an immediate appeal from the Bangladesh government.

The Bangladesh government said it was “unprecedented” that a federal judge in Washington DC ordered the arrest of two senior Bangladeshi officials to force their testimony in a lawsuit filed by a power company .

The motion said: “Petitioner has not cited any example of a court enforcing a sanctions order against a foreign state, much less ordering the arrest of high-ranking officials of a foreign government during a diplomatic visit to the States -United. The lack of precedent is not surprising, because such action is, or at least was, unimaginable. »

Bangladesh condemned the judge’s decision, Law360 said.

The dispute originated in 1997, when Smith Cogeneration signed a power purchase agreement with the Bangladesh government and its Power Development Board that included the construction of a barge-based power plant in northern Bangladesh.

Smith Cogeneration told the Washington, D.C. court in its 2006 enforcement motion that the government had agreed to provide the company with all permits required to complete the project, according to the Law360 report.

However, the government abandoned the project in 1999 and never provided the company with the necessary permits, Smith Cogeneration claimed.