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Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus indicted in Bangladesh embezzlement case

June 12, 2024 at 02:41 pm

DHAKA (Reuters) - Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus and 13 others were indicted by a Bangladesh court on Wednesday on charges of embezzlement of 252.2 million taka ($2 million) from the workers' welfare fund of his telecoms company.

Yunus, 83, and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace prize for work to lift millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans of under $100 to the rural poor of Bangladesh, pioneering a global movement now known as microcredit.

The prosecution accuses 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 are also accused of money laundering.

Yunus denied any involvement in corruption, telling reporters that he and his coworkers were being harassed by the authorities.

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.

The trial will begin on July 15, he said.

In January, Yunus was sentenced to six months in prison 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 said in an interview with Reuters last week was "very flimsy, made-up stories".

During the interview, Yunus said Bangladesh had turned into a "one-party" state as the ruling party stamps out political competition. The government denied his allegations on the cases and the style of rule.

($1 = 117.0000 taka)

(Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Alison Williams)

By Ruma Paul

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Muhammad Yunus

Mohammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist and entrepreneur. Nicknamed the “banker of poor”, he founded the first microcredit institution, the Grameen Bank. Thanks to this concept he won the Nobel Prize for peace in 2006.

He is the third of fourteen children; he spent the early years in his native village and then his family move to Chittagong, the second city of Bangladesh, where his father opened a jewellery store.

Attended a primary school Lamabazar and Chittagong collegiate school, Yunus was also a boy scout. Thanks to an international boy scouts exchange, he travelled in Europe, Japan, Philippines, Middle East and North America.

In 1957, he obtained a bachelor in economics at Dhaka University, and one year later he got a master in arts. Then he became teacher in economics at Chittagong College.
At 21 years old, he became entrepreneur, establishing the first high-tech factory for packaging and printing of all East Pakistan. The concept was an amazing success but he decided to give the management part to his two brothers in order to move to United States to get a PhD.

After a master at university of Colorado, Yunus started a PhD at Vanderbilt private University in Tennessee. He met his first wife, a young American with Russian origin, Vera Forestenko. They married in 1970, and seven years later they had a daughter called Monica.

In 1980, Yunus divorce and remarried Afrozi Yunus, a professor of physics at Jahangirnagar University, with whom he had a second daughter, Dina Yunus.

After a PhD in economics, he got a job at Middle Tennessee State University. During a liberation war in Bangladesh, Yunus decided to support the separatists.

In 1971, Bangladesh’s independence is proclaimed, and Yunus decided to come back to his Country, leaving his job as university professor. He became head of the economics department of Chittagong University. Against famine, which destroys his country, he decided to focus on the poor life style of villages near to University.

With many students, he created a group of “research and action”, which its first work focused on agricultural issues. The young professor understood that much problems faced by poor farmers are linked to difficulties of access to capital. For this reason Yunus proposed a “micro-loan” (between 30 and 50 dollars) to a few dozen of villages, using his own money.

The effect of these loans is very soon positive on the material situation of the beneficiaries, and without difficulties of reimburse. In 1977 Yunus decided to create his own program, called “Grameen” (means village).

This is an instant success, at first in Bangladesh, where Grammen took bank status in 1983, and in other many countries where the model was exported since 1989.

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Linked companies
Grameen Telecom Corp. Grameen Telecom Corp. Wireless TelecommunicationsCommunications Grameen Telecom Corp. provides cellular mobile phones to the villagers. Its product Village Phone, offers telecommunication services to the rural people in Bangladesh. The company was founded by Muhammad Yunus in 1995 and is headquartered in Dhaka, Bangladesh.	Founder
Grameen America, Inc. Grameen America, Inc. Finance/Rental/LeasingFinance Grameen America, Inc. is a non-profit microfinance organization that helps women living in poverty to build small businesses and improve their lives. The non-profit company is based in New York, NY, and has expanded to 24 branches in 17 cities across the United States, including TX, NJ, IL, CA, IN, FL, and Wark. Grameen America has invested over $1.80 billion in more than 134,500 low-income women entrepreneurs since its opening in January 2008. Founded by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus, the organization offers microloans, financial training, and support to transform communities and fight poverty. Andrea Jung has been the CEO of the company since 2014.	Founder

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