"London's Bow Street Magistrates' Court has released Senthil Kumar, the CEO of our Dutch subsidiary, on bail Wednesday evening," i-Flex spokesman Sunil Robert told AFP.

Kumar was detained last week in London at the behest of Dutch authorities over alleged visa irregularities.

Thirteen other employees of i-Flex working on projects in Amsterdam were questioned last week by the Dutch authorities over similar allegations. The employees returned to India last week, Robert said.

"We got them back immediately last week considering the emotional trauma they went through there," Robert said.

Visiting Swedish Trade Minister Leif Pagrotsky said Kumar's arrest was on technical grounds.

"Obviously this is imposition of a non-tariff barrier against providing services which are fundamentally driven by individuals," Pagrotsky said Thursday in Bangalore, the hub of India's software industry.

"In terms of goods, you can apply barriers to restrict movements. But in order to deliver services a person should move to the location," he said, adding that Europe was "generally closed" in issuing travel visas.

"It is also not easy to get visas for the United States or Japan and to solve this, we need to have a new multilateral agreement in the World Trade Organisation to include services," Pagrotsky said.

The questioning of i-Flex employees was the third such case involving Indian software professionals within a year.

Indian authorities have said the visa-related arrests were unwarranted and described them as "economic protectionism."

In March Malaysian authorities arrested 270 Indian software engineers on alleged immigration charges while last year top officials of Polaris Software India were detained in Indonesia.

The Indian government said Tuesday it would provide an "escort service" to its software professionals to guide them on visa regulations.

SPACE.WIRE