Staff Reporter :
The authorities will launch an investigation into the financial affairs of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus and the micro-credit agency Grameen Bank for alleged different irregularities, especially evading large amount of taxes.
Admitting the fact, Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Thursday said: “It’s a tough issue. We think, there should be an investigation about the tax benefit which Dr Yunus have been enjoying from different organizations using the name of Grameen Bank.”
The statement of Finance Minister came just a day after the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told the National Parliament [on Wednesday] that ‘Yunus doesn’t pay taxes, whereas he has got a huge amount of money.’
“The Grameen Bank is tax free, but 40/50 other sister companies are not free of taxes. So, why these organizations will not pay taxes? I don’t want to tell anything about it [tax issue]. So far as I know, the NBR has a report about it. It’s a task of Finance Minister; he will take step in this regard. He [Yunus] is running well without paying any tax,” the PM also said.
Against this backdrop, the Finance Minister yesterday categorically said that Yunus has enjoyed “illegal tax benefits” for other business organizations those were founded as the sister concerns of Grameen Bank. “It’s illegal. This is being investigated… Tough action will be taken against him after completion of investigation under the existing law of the country,” the Finance Minister added.
A few months earlier, the Central Investigation Cell of the National Bureau of Revenue had sent notices to banks requiring them to provide information about any accounts, loans, or other financial instruments held in the last seven years either by Yunus, his wife, the Yunus family trust, or Grameen Bank.
The notices were sent out after a tax commissioner had written to Yunus informing him the NBR had also decided to audit the Nobel laureate’s personal tax return for the current financial year, and asking for documentation to “verify” his income and expenditure.
It was not the first time the NBR has shown an interest in Yunus’ financial affairs. In 2015, NBR filed a court case against Yunus for allegedly failing to pay US$1.5m in tax. The case was subsequently stayed by the High Court.
The latest inquiry is seen by some observers as a possible new step in the ruling Awami League party’s ongoing feud with Yunus, which was initially triggered by his attempt in 2007 to establish a rival political party.
In fact, the campaign against the noted economist started in November 2010, when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, claimed Yunus was “sucking blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation”.
In the following years, the government removed Yunus as managing director of Grameen Bank, filed a criminal case against him for food adulteration, and initiated investigations into the bank and its sister concerns.
The PM has also accused him of lobbying the World Bank to stop its $3b financing of the Padma Bridge, and said “the conspirators” seeking to block the grant.
Meanwhile, the defeated US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as Secretary of State, exploited official position to award $13 million in grants, contracts and loans to her longtime friend and Clinton Foundation donor Muhammad Yunus, after he was removed from the post of Managing Director of Grameen Bank in 2011. Secretary Clinton’s mixing of official work with foundation donors was reportedly the focus of a FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] public corruption investigation of the former secretary of state, according to an investigation conducted by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Based on the investigation, the US-based newspaper Daily Caller ran report that the tax funds were given to Yunus through 18 separate U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID] award transactions listed by the federal contracting site USA spending.gov.
