Nobel winner says bank sacking ‘political’

DHAKA—Bangladeshi Nobel laureate and micro-lending pioneer Muhammad Yunus claimed Monday his ousting from a high-profile bank job was a government power grab, as he awaited a court verdict on his dismissal.

The 70-year-old — who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering the concept of small cash loans — said the government’s move last week to sack him as managing director of Grameen Bank was politically motivated.

“They want to put their own person at the chair of the bank, a political person,” Yunus told a Washington micro-lending conference via video link.

Yunus and Grameen Bank, which employs 24,000 people, shot to fame in the 1980s by lending small amounts of money to poor entrepreneurs outside the mainstream banking system.

Since then the Grameen brand has sprawled into other sectors from solar panels and popular mobile phones to ethically-produced yogurt.

His removal has sparked street protests in Bangladesh and global diplomatic scorn, with top US lawmaker John Kerry and others voicing their deep concern.

Yunus has defied the dismissal order, returning to work at Grameen’s headquarters in Dhaka and lodging a case at the High Court contesting his firing.

The court will announce its verdict on Tuesday at 2:00 pm (0800 GMT), Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told AFP on Monday.

Until his sacking, Yunus said relations between the bank and the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had been limited: “We had no real connections,” despite the authorities owning a 25-percent stake in the firm.

“Suddenly that has changed. The government got interested in our activities, trying to get involved in the bank.”

“The government today wants to take control of the board of the bank so that it becomes fully at their disposal.”

Some observers say money, prestige and an envious prime minister lie at the heart of the scandal.

“His removal is a culmination of a year-long campaign against him by this government,” Asif Nazrul, a professor of law at Dhaka University recently told AFP.

“He is strongly disliked by Sheikh Hasina and some others in government because of his huge international acceptability and his nationwide Grameen network. He is perceived as a political threat to this government.”

Supporters say Yunus’s troubles stem from 2007 when he floated the idea of forming a political party, earning the wrath of the prime minister, who has publicly disparaged his work.

Yunus denied any political aspirations and said he still hoped to keep the character and the independence of the bank.

“I’m not a politician, I’m not into politics, I don’t think people would take me seriously as a politician.”

Yunus apologized for not appearing at the Washington conference in person as planned: “Things are going in the wrong direction here in Bangladesh, so I had to stay here.”

“This is a totally absurd situation.”

On Monday, the drama also played out in a Dhaka court room, with Yunus’s lawyers expressing concern their client would not get a fair hearing.

“The world is watching this courtroom and what it will decide. My client is very apprehensive of whether he will receive a fair hearing,” Rokonuddin Mahmud told the court.

The central bank argues Yunus has been in his position illegally since he did not seek its approval when he was reappointed to the post of Grameen Bank managing director in 2000.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told AFP that the court would give Yunus a fair hearing, pointing to the fact that Yunus’s lawyers had been allowed ample time to present their case.

“What the Bangladesh (Central) Bank has done is entirely in accordance with the law. No one is indispensable. Everyone has to leave sometime. Yunus is not doing the right thing by clinging onto this position,” he told AFP.