One of the strongest demands made by protesting students in Bangladesh was to bring in Muhamad Yunus to replace Sheikh Hasina Wajid as the country’s leader.  These students consider Yunus some kind of a Messiah who will deliver peace prosperity and economic progress for their country, as they believe he did through introducing the microcredit system under Grameen Banks back in the 80s.  Yunus was out of country while being on bail for an active case against him.

Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, through which a whopping $6 billion was lent to small entrepreneurs in housing, student and micro-enterprise loans.  He also owns a think tank called The Yunus Centre. Additionally, Yunus chairs Grameen Telecom, which owns 34.2 per cent of the country’s largest mobile phone company, Grameenphone, a subsidiary of Norway’s telecom giant Telenor. Further, Younus runs the Grameen America program in poor neighbourhoods of the US where once again the network has thousands of customers.  To give an idea, by 2022 Grameen America lent more than $2 billion to 142,000 clients.

Grameen bank loans were initially aimed at working class or poor women who were looking to start a small enterprise.  In the early days, these women were divided in groups, and each group member was made responsible for recovery of the loan taken by their co members within the allotted time.  These small loans carried interest rate of upto 20% per annum, which is unusually steep but considered normal in microfinancing space.  Further, the women responsible for loan recovery were sometimes unable to pay it back, leading to penalty to the whole group and then a feud would start in the village where these women were from. The banking system made it mandatory for all borrowers to become a customer of the bank once they reach a certain ‘saving status’. Clients were required to put some of their borrowings into creditor-run savings accounts as a kind of collateral—“forced savings”—which would reduce available credit without proportionally reducing interest payments and thus effectively raises the rate. Grameen bank also charged an upfront fee where each member had to buy a 100 taka share of the bank once their forced savings balance was high enough to pay for it. The member could get that 100 taka back only when they quit the bank, with 30% dividend on face value. This was supposedly done to drive the habit of uniform saving into borrowers. In later years, the borrowers were instructed to open a new account for each new loan, and at times different interest rates would apply to each of these accounts making it too complicated and messy for the account holders by design to keep track of their money. The borrowing officers used these savings as an insurance against the loan installments thus restricting access of account holders to their own money.  At times, the ‘collateral’ for a loan could end up being as high as 90% of the loan amount.  All of this was done to ensure the institution was always in profit and only the borrowers were at risk. When Sheikh Hasina came into power in 2008, she who has accused Yunus of “sucking blood from the poor”.

On another front, Norwegian documentary called ‘Caught in micro debt’  accused Grameen bank of dodging taxes in 2010. This charge was vehemently denied by Yunus but later on cases of tax irregularities were registered against him by the government.  Yunus is also accused of not paying taxes to the government of Bangladesh and also of using different ways to deflect these accusations against him.  Yunus attempted to avoid paying a large amount of tax money by ‘donating’ TK 760 million to three of his non-profit trusts, known as Yunus Trust, Yunus Family Trust, and Yunus Centre Trust. The National Bureau of Revenue (NBR) investigated the case and requested TK 160 million in compliance with the Gift Tax Law. Later, Prof. Yunus challenged the legitimacy of the NBR’s notification, filing a petition with the Tax Appellate Tribunal. He eventually lost a lengthy legal struggle and was forced to pay TK12.28 crore in accordance with the court judgement. Grameen Telecom owned by Yunus is estimated to have dodged almost Tk 1,000 crore in tax throughout its 26-year history.

In a different case, Yunus and 13 others were accused of embezzling 250 million takas (about $2 million) from the workers welfare fund of Grameen Telecom. He is also facing charges of gross violation of labour laws and corruption at the company.  18 former workers filed a case against Yunus, accusing him of siphoning off their job benefits. Yunus went on trial on charges of violating labor laws in the same month.  In total, 198 court cases have been filed against Muhammad Yunus.

Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government started its investigating on Muhammad Yunus and his various enterprises after she came in power in 2008.  In 2010, Yunus underwent his first court trial which was mainly instigated by the Norwegian documentary and its findings of gross misconduct in Grameen Bank.  This documentary revealed that Yunus moved about $100 million from the Grameen Bank’s cash granted by European nations to another organisation named Grameen Kalyan, which violated the laws. Some of these funds were later returned to Grameen Bank after protest of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the Embassy of Norway.

In 2013, the government of Bangladesh put Yunus on trial for a second time.  Over this period, several international leaders and prominent personalities urged Hasina Wajid to exonerate Nobel Laureate Yunus from these ‘frivolous’ charges.  These personalities include U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, former US President Barrack Obama, Secretary General of Amnesty Agnes Callamard.  The demands made by these entities consisted of various levels of urging, threats and coercion.  Agnes Callamard talked of “eroding freedoms and bulldozing critics into submission”.  The UN Human Rights Commissioner called it  “the continued intimidation and harassment of human rights advocates and civil society leaders”. Additionally, the deep state representative Barrack Obama as well as Ban Ki Moon expressed ” alarm that [Yunus] has recently been targeted”.  Curiously, not even one of these supporters of Yunus have said a word about the atrocities carried out against Hindus and other minorities over last few days.

On 5th August 2024, Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign by Bangladesh Army Chief.  On 7th August, court dropped labour charges against Muhammad Yunis, and on 8th August, he was sworn in as interim leader of Bangladesh.

Reference:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41287-022-00539-9

https://www.cgdev.org/blog/quick-whats-grameen-banks-interest-rate

https://freshangleng.com/30942/dr–yunus–dark-side-and-social-media-users#:~:text=Yunus%20is%20regarded%20as%20having,enterprises%20and%20personal%20income%20tax.

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