Dhaka, Oct. 27 -- Country's banks are reluctant to establish direct transaction links with the Russian banks amid the fear of possible US sanction, officials said.

The fear was expressed in a position paper prepared by the Bangladesh Bank (BB) on the proposed direct banking operations with Russia.

"Local banks fear that directly embracing the Russian System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) platform in Bangladesh in place of SWIFT may result in retaliatory US sanctions and losing US-based correspondent banking and international payment settlement facilities. The de-risking criteria imposed by US-based counterpart/correspondent banks treats any kind of alignment with SPFS may be considered as a bypassing mechanism," reads the pap...