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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Bangladesh: Muhammad Yunus court case against sacking

Bangladesh: Muhammad Yunus court case against sacking

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published Published on Mar 3, 2011   modified Modified on Mar 3, 2011

Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has launched a legal battle, one day after he was sacked from the Grameen microfinance bank he founded.

Prof Yunus lodged a case in Bangladesh's High Court challenging his dismissal from the post, lawyers said.

The central bank sacked him saying he was past retirement age and had been improperly installed in his post. Grameen Bank disputes the accusations.

He has been under pressure from the government to step down.

The BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan in Dhaka says that the effort to remove Prof Yunus is the culmination of a long-running feud with the government, which has been taking a series of measures in recent months to remove him.

Prof Yunus submitted a petition challenging the removal and the court is set to hold a formal hearing later on Thursday, the Associated Press news agency reports.
 
'Continuing in office'

Prof Yunus fell out with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2007 when he was trying to set up a new party.

The government owns a 25% stake in Grameen, which pioneered the microfinance concept of lending small amounts of money to the poor which has been replicated worldwide.

Bangladesh Bank, the country's central bank, said that Prof Yunus had violated the country's retirement laws by staying on as Grameen's head long past the mandatory retirement age of 60. Prof Yunus is 70.

"Bangladesh Bank has relieved Yunus of his duties as managing director of the Grameen Bank," Muzammel Huq, the government-appointed chairman of Grameen Bank, said on Wednesday.

Mr Huq also said that Prof Yunus had not received the required approval from Bangladesh Bank when he was appointed managing director in 1999.

"Grameen Bank by-laws clearly state that the managing director should be appointed by the board with the prior approval of the Bangladesh Bank," he said.

'Unfairly vilified'

Correspondents say that the attempted sacking of Prof Yunus is not likely to be well-received internationally.

A group of charities led by former Irish President Mary Robinson came to his defence last month, arguing that he had been unfairly vilified by the government.

The Friends of Grameen group alleged that Prof Yunus had been subjected to "politically orchestrated" and "increasingly aggressive" attacks.

In December, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina accused Prof Yunus of treating Grameen Bank as his "personal property" and claimed that it was "sucking blood from the poor".

The Bangladeshi government set up a review committee the following month to look into the bank's affairs amid reports that it could take it over.

Around the same time as these developments, a TV documentary alleged that aid money had been wrongly transferred from one part of Grameen to another in the mid-1990s.

The bank denied all the charges and later the Norwegian government, one of its main donors, gave it the all-clear.

Mrs Robinson said in February that some highly visible private microcredit experiences had been set up around the world because of the pioneering work of Prof Yunus to provide loans to the poor.

But critics say that the microcredit concept worldwide has been discredited - in India it has been alleged that onerous conditions placed on borrowers has led to a spate of suicides.

BBC, 3 March, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12631784


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