Grameen Bank challenges government ownership claim

DHAKA - The Bangladesh government has told foreign donors that Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus-led Grameen Bank “is an organ of the state”, a claim hotly denied by the rural credit pioneer.

Foreign Minister Dipu Moni at a meeting with ambassadors and senior diplomats here justified the government’s decision to investigate the Grameen Bank, New Age newspaper said Wednesday quoting some of the diplomats. The meeting was held Jan 9.

Moni met diplomats after Ellen Goldstein, the World Bank’s Bangladesh country representative, sent a letter to the finance minister raising concerns on behalf of international donors about how the government was dealing with the Grameen Bank.

Moni told diplomats that the government considered the bank “an organ of the state” and that there were many alleged irregularities which needed investigation, the media report said.

It alleged that three days before the diplomats’ briefing, Moni’s office called up the Asian University of Woman to inform it that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina “would only speak at the university’s international conference in Dhaka, which was to be held later last month, if Muhammad Yunus was removed from the programme”.

Yunus had been invited by Cherie Blair, one of the university’s patrons and wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, to give a keynote speech at the end of the conference.

Following the intervention of Moni’s office, Yunus wasn’t made a part of the conference.

Omar Shareef, the university’s chief operating officer, denied that Yunus’s absence had anything to do with the Bangladesh government. “There was scheduling conflicts and that was the reason why Muhammed Yunus could not attend,” he said.

A Grameen Bank statement, however, said: “Professor Yunus was scheduled to preside over the closing plenary of the conference Programmes were set for many months. We were informed by the university authorities at the last moment that due to unavoidable circumstances these programmes could no longer take place. They were therefore cancelled.”

A diplomat quoted Moni as saying that the notion that the Grameen Bank is independent of the government is a complete non-starter. “It is a statutory public authority and therefore an instrument of the state,” she said.

In a written statement, Grameen said the 1983 Grameen Bank Ordinance states that the government only “owns 25 per cent of the bank” and is allowed to nominate only 3 of the 12 directors.

It stated that although the bank was a “statutory body”, under the provisions of the ordinance, “the board of the Grameen Bank is given autonomous power to manage the bank and make all policies, and rules”.

Indicating a confrontation between the government and the bank, the newspaper said the government Jan 12 announced a five member inquiry team led by A.K. Monowar Uddin Ahmed of Dhaka University to look into the affairs of the Grameen Bank.

Ahmed said the probe would be “objective”.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has in the recent past expressed reservations about the working of the bank that has millions of poor women benefiting from its rural credit scheme and 20 million mobile phone users.

Muhammad Yunus, a US-trained economist who launched Grameen in mid-1970s, has been honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize. In a statement Jan 27, Norwegian Nobel Committee strongly supported Yunus and Grameen.

Yunus and his officials have denied any wrong-doing.