Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi pioneer of “microfinance” loans to help the poor, lodged a Supreme Court appeal yesterday against an order sacking him from his own bank.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has also asked the court to immediately suspend the central bank’s order removing him from Grameen Bank, which he founded in 1983 and which provides collateral-free loans to 8 million rural borrowers.
Yunus, 70, who is celebrated worldwide for tackling poverty through microfinance cash loans, has fallen out with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and his supporters say he has been targeted in a bitter smear campaign.
He was fired as Grameen Bank managing director last week by order of the central bank, and on Tuesday he lost a High Court appeal against his dismissal.
Backed by a high-profile international lobby group, he defied the order by returning to work at Grameen’s headquarters and launching his legal battle.
“The appeal has been submitted at the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the High Court verdict and challenging the central bank order that removed him from his post,” said Tanim Hussain Shawon, one of Yunus’ lawyers.
A preliminary hearing was to be held yesterday at the offices of a Supreme Court judge, Shawon said, adding that the appeal had been lodged by both Yunus and the nine elected members of Grameen’s board of directors.
The central bank — which is nominally independent from the government — removed Yunus on the basis that he had been in his position illegally since failing to seek its approval when he was reappointed indefinitely in 1999.
High Court judge Muhammad Mamtaj Uddin Ahmed said in his ruling on Tuesday that it was “crystal clear” the central bank’s order was legal and added that Yunus had also exceeded Grameen Bank’s mandatory retirement age of 60.
Analysts say Yunus’ troubles stem from 2007, when he floated the idea of forming a political party, earning the wrath of Hasina, who has publicly disparaged his work.
Grameen’s huge influence in Bangladesh and its move into solar panels, mobile phones and other consumer goods also appear to have triggered the government’s animosity.
“They want to put their own person at the chair of the bank, a political person,” Yunus, who won the Nobel peace prize in 2006, told a Washington microfinance conference via video link late on Monday.
Friends of Grameen, a lobby group chaired by former Irish president Mary Robinson, described the High Court verdict as “politically oriented and without legal grounds.”
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