Dhaka: Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus’s final appeal has been rejected by Bangladesh’s Supreme Court against his sacking from the Grameen micro-finance bank he founded in 1983.
“Rejected,” Chief Justice ABM Khairul Haque pronounced as the seven-member Appellate Division of the Supreme Court upheld the High Court verdict validating the Bangladesh Bank decision to sack him.
Attorney General Mahbub-e-Alam said the court’s judgment meant Prof Yunus could no longer retain his post as the bank’s managing director.
The verdict came as reports this week said talks to resolve the issue outside the court progressed towards a “positive direction” amid growing international criticism against his unceremonious dismissal from the pioneering microfinance bank that he founded three decades ago.
The apex court earlier adjourned until April 4 the hearing on 70-year-old Mr. Yunus’ appeal allowing both sides to take more time to reach a compromise as insisted by the US and other major development partners.
Prof Yunus was not in the court to hear the ruling but his lawyers hope to have the court order rescinded on the basis that they did not have time to submit all their arguments.
One of his lawyers, Rokhanuddin Mahmud, told the BBC that while the move was unusual, it was not unprecedented.
Mr Mahmud said that Prof Yunus’s legal team had the right to ask for the court judgement to be “recalled” because it had not yet been signed formally into law.
Mr. Yunus’ experiment of poor men’s banking earned Bangladesh the repute of being the home of microcredit and himself the Nobel Peace Prize along with his Grameen Bank in 2006.
Analysts earlier said Mr. Yunus’s troubles stem from 2007 when he announced formation of a political party, an idea that was visibly unwelcome by Prime Minister Sheijh Hasina and her archrival Khaleda Zia of BNP, while he himself abandoned the idea within months.
The government has 25 per cent stake in Grameen Bank that employs 24,000 people, provides collateral-free loans to eight million borrowers, the vast majority from rural areas after detailed talks familiar with the Grameen Bank activities.
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