Conflict over Bangladeshi Micro-lender is 'Political', Some Say (PBS Newshour)
David Roodman was interviewed by PBS Newshour on Yunus
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From the Article
A Bangladeshi court has upheld the removal of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus as head of the micro-lending Grameen Bank he founded, in a move his supporters are calling politically motivated.
On March 2, the bank's chairman told reporters that Yunus was no longer managing director because at age 70 he was beyond the retirement age of 60. Yunus brought a legal challenge, but the court ruled Tuesday that the action was legal.
Yunus' removal came after a documentary aired last year that described an investigation into Grameen transferring ownership of Norwegian aid funds from one entity to another in the 1990s in order to preserve the bank's tax-exempt status. The Norwegian government asked the bank to retain ownership of the funds. It complied in 1998, and the probe uncovered no evidence of fraud.
But the bad blood between Yunus and Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of the ruling Awami League started before that in 2007, when Yunus considered starting a political party at the beginning of an interim military government, said David Roodman, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Yunus later backed off the idea, but the resentment might have lingered.
"Politics in Bangladesh is a pretty brutal affair," said Roodman. The government has three of the 12 seats on Grameen's board, including the chairmanship, he said.
If Hasina or another official from her party becomes head of the bank, it's unclear what they would do, but if they began canceling borrowers' debts in order to curry favor for their political party, it could hurt the institution to lose that stream of revenue, he added.
