The conviction of British MP Tulip Siddiq was significant news in Britain last Monday, where it was the second item on the flagship BBC Radio 4 news broadcast at one o’clock and reported elsewhere.

This followed a story the week before about a letter to the Bangladesh High Commission in London, drafted by senior British lawyers hired by Ms Siddiq. As reported by the Guardian newspaper, the letter seems largely concerned with issues of legal due process. “Due process” concerns the framework in which a matter is prosecuted and adjudicated and not the substantive arguments advanced by either side. The presence or absence of adequate legal representation is, for instance, a matter of due process.

Plenty of commentators in Bangladesh have held forth on whether Ms Siddiq was afforded due process. Here, I do not concern myself with such issues at all. Nor do I consider any of the substantive arguments in court. Instead, I focus on an aspect of the affair that has received much less attention, namely the Bangladesh government’s handling of the matter in the UK public space and the media relations disaster. I also consider what is, beyond the present moment, the greatest significance of the whole fiasco, arguably, its impact on ongoing Bangladeshi efforts at asset recovery outside Bangladesh, as they relate to any person.