Dhaka: Bangladesh on Thursday ordered a fresh probe into the activities and financial transactions of Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of pioneering micro lending agency ‘Grameen Bank’, and took steps to curtail his powers.
“The cabinet had a threadbare discussion on different issues of the Grameen Bank and asked the concerned departments to submit reports on a number of issues,” cabinet secretary Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told newsmen after emerging from a cabinet meeting headed by PM Sheikh Hasina.
He said the cabinet demanded explanation from concerned government offices about the legality of Yunus’s continuation in office as its Grameen’s managing director after 61 years of age and amount he drew from the bank as salary and allowances following his retention to the post of Managing Director after 60 years of his age.
“The government decided to examine if it was lawful for Dr Muhammad Yunus to continue holding the office of Managing Director of Grameen Bank beyond the mandated age of 60,” Bhuiyan said.
The cabinet, he said, also asked the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to give report to the cabinet about the total foreign exchange Yunus brought in the country as a wage earner and how much tax he paid and how much tax exemption he was given on account of being a ‘wage earner’. The cabinet also asked the NBR to inform it if Yunus was eligible for the category of wage earner, the cabinet secretary added.
The cabinet approved the proposal for amending the Grameen Bank Ordinance 1983 to reduce the power of the bank’s board and give more authority to its chairman to pick the managing director of the microcredit organisation, changing the specialised bank’s structure.
The development came as his protracted row with Hasina government intensified recently as the World Bank scrapped a multibillion credit agreement with Bangladesh fearing a “graft plot”. Several government leaders alleged he had a role in the cancellation of the deal. But Yunus, rallied huge foreign support in the dispute while the US has reaffirmed its support for Nobel Prize winner with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging Hasina to keep integrated the pioneering micro lending agency’s structure despite a review process. (PTI)