Bangladesh tries again to oust Nobel laureate from bank post

DHAKA. March 3. KAZINFORM It's not often that a Nobel Peace Prize laureate gets fired, but the Bangladeshi government said Wednesday it did just that in dismissing Muhammad Yunus from a top post in the pioneering bank he founded; Kazinform cites CNN.

Grameen Bank's general manager, however, disputed the government's claim.

K.M. Abdul Waddod, the general manager of the Bangladesh Central Bank's regulation and policy department, said his bank, the regulatory authority in the South Asian nation, had sent for a second time a letter to the Grameen Bank chairman, urging the ouster of Yunus from his post of managing director because he was past retirement age.

The government, which has a 25% stake in Grameen, said that by the bank's own rules, Yunus, now 70, was required to end his service when he turned 60.

Yunus pioneered microcredit financing and founded Grameen Bank nearly three decades ago in an effort to alleviate poverty by lending to the poor, who could not otherwise qualify for bank loans. Throughout this battle with the government, he has refused to resign from the bank that won him a Nobel prize in 2006.

Yunus' supporters say the effort to remove him has little to do with age and much to do with the larger issue of microcredit and its primary vehicle in Bangladesh -- Grameen Bank.

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