By IANS,
Dhaka : A woman official will be Grameen Bank’s acting managing director, replacing Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladesh government announced Thursday.
Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith said Nurjahan Begum, currently the deputy managing director, will act as the managing director and the government will find a new managing director within the next three months, news website bdnews24.com reported.
Muhith also released a report of the inquiry committee that probed the working of the Grameen Bank, the rural credit pioneer that Yunus set up and headed for the last three decades.
The five-member panel led by former dean of social sciences of Dhaka University A.K. Monawwar Uddin Ahmad had submitted the report to Muhith April 25.
Yunus lost the battle with the high court and then the supreme court rejected his appeals thrice.
However, he remained the managing director as under the bank’s rules, a successor had to be found to replace him.
After the court verdict, the government had said Yunus should step down.
Yunus responded with a statement alleging “political influence” and expressing concern about the “independence” of the bank.
The tussle between him and the government has been on for over three months when the government ordered a high-level probe.
Bangladesh Bank, the country’s central bank and financial sector regulator, removed Yunus as the micro-lender’s managing director March 2 for flouting rules when he was reappointed in 1999.
It said the 70-year-old Yunus had no legal authority to act as the managing director, since its board had not obtained the Bangladesh Bank’s sanction to re-appoint him beyond the bank’s official retirement age.
Yunus said he has gone to the court repeatedly to question the legality of the order removing him.
Some governments, including the US and France, and several prominent personalities at home and abroad have supported Yunus’s continuance.
Grameen has been emulated in many countries, winning the bank and Yunus the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.