Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is the chief adviser in the interim government of Bangladesh, was indicted by a court in June on charges of embezzlement of 252.22 million taka, roughly $2.2 million from workers’ welfare fund of his telecom company.
Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for work to life millions out of poverty by granting small loans of under $100 to Bangladesh’ poor, paving way for the microcredit programme.
Yunus and the others of embezzling 252.2 million taka from the welfare fund of Grameen Telecom, which owns a 34.2% stake in Grameenphone, the country’s largest mobile phone company and a subsidiary of Norway’s telecom giant Telenor. They were also accused of money laundering.
Special Judge Syed Arafat Hossain dismissed petitions seeking the charges to be dropped, saying the prosecution had preliminarily demonstrated the misappropriation of funds and the illegal money transfers abroad.
In another case, Yunus was sentenced to six months in prison in January for violations of labour law, which he denied.
Although he is not in prison after securing bail in that case, Yunus faces more than 100 cases regarding the violations and graft accusations, which he had said in an interview with Reuters was “very flimsy, made-up stories”.
What are the Allegations Against Yunus?
In an August 28, 2023 letter, where signatories raised concerns about Yunus “targeted by what we believe to be continuous judicial harassment,” Sheikh Hasina responded by saying she would welcome international experts and lawyers to come to Bangladesh to assess the legal proceedings.
The allegations against Yunus included pursuing aggressive methods in collecting loans with a high interest rate to diverting funds and not following norms.
In 2010, a Danish documentary made allegations against Yunus and the Grameen Bank of diverting funds worth about $100 million given to the Bank by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). The allegations were subsequently disproved.
Hasina had called Yunus a “bloodsucker” and accused him of using force and other means to recover loans from poor rural women as head of Grameen Bank.
After reviewing his activities in 2011, Yunus was removed as the bank’s managing director for allegedly violating government retirement regulations on beyond the age of 60.
In an interview to Harvard Business Review, Yunus said this “fundamentally damaged the very essence of Grameen Bank. With this change, the government has practically taken over management, and this will set in motion the end of the Bank.”
According to the Associated Press, Yunus was put on trial in 2013 on charges of receiving money without government permission, including his Nobel Prize award and royalties from a book. He later faced other charges involving other companies he created, including Grameen Telecom, which is part of the country’s largest mobile phone company, GrameenPhone. Yunus and 13 others were named in a case brought by the Anti-Corruption Commission in a related matter.
In 2015, Yunus was summoned by Bangladesh’s revenue authorities over non-payment of taxes amounting to $1.51 million.
About Muhammad Yunus
Yunus is a distinguished social entrepreneur, banker, economist and civil society leader. He was born on June 28, 1940 in Chittagong in Bangladesh, and studied at Dhaka University. Later, he received a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University.
According to the website nobelprize.org, Yunus received his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt in 1969, and in the next year he became an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University. He rose to international fame when in 2006 he received Nobel Prize for his pioneer work in microcredit and microfinance.
The Grameen Bank, set up by Yunus in Bangladesh in 1983, provided small loans to underserved entrepreneurs, empowering them to achieve social and economic development despite limited access to traditional banking services.
From 1993 to 1995, Yunus was a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women. He has served on the Global Commission of Women’s Health, the Advisory Council for Sustainable Economic Development, and the UN Expert Group on Women and Finance.
He had floated a political party in 2007 named ‘Nagarik Shakti’, but ruled out any possibility of contesting elections.
Yunus served as a Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland from 2012 to 2018 and was previously a professor of economics at Chittagong University. He was a board member of the United Nations Foundation from 1998 to 2021.
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