Dhaka, Bangladesh
Prof Yunus appears in court today

Defamation suit

Prof Yunus appears in court today

MYMENSINGH, Jan 17: Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus will appear before a Mymensingh court in a defamation case on Tuesday, reports bdnews24.com.
"Yunus is scheduled to present himself before Mymensingh Senior Judicial Magistrate Court on 10.30am Tuesday," plaintiff Nazrul Islam Chunnu on Monday told bdnews24.com.
Nazrul, joint general secretary of district Jatiya Somajtantrik Dal (JSD), filed the case on Jan 21, 2007 for derogatory comments Yunus made against politicians.
According to the case details, in an interview given to AFP on Jan 17, 2007 at the Grameen Bank headquarters, Yunus had said: "Politicians in Bangladesh only work for money. There is no ideology here."
The report was published in several newspapers on the following day.
Judge Mohammad Habibullah took the case into cognizance on Monday and ordered Yunus to appear before the court.
Yunus is already facing charges along with 12 others for not paying about Tk 40 million they had borrowed from Social Islami Bank. The bank's Sirajganj district branch manager filed the case with Sirajganj Artha Rin Adalat (money loan court) on Dec 2, 2010.
Two days earlier, on Nov 30, the Norwegian state television NRK ran a documentary titled 'Caught in Micro Debt', that accused Yunus of transferring funds to Grameen Kalyan, a sister concern, from Grameen bank, breaching the agreement made with the fund's donor, Norwegian aid agency Norad.
bdnews24.com was the first in Bangladesh to break the story, which triggered a great deal of discussion about the institution in the local and international media as well as in society.
In response, the government on Jan 12 formed a five-member committee to look into the activities of Grameen Bank and its sister concerns. The committee, chaired by former social science dean of Dhaka University professor Manwar Uddin Ahmed, is scheduled to hand in its report within four months.

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