Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus was convicted on Monday of breaking Bangladesh’s labour rules in a case denounced as politically motivated by his supporters.
Yunus, 83, is credited with bringing millions out of poverty with his pioneering microfinance bank, but he has attracted the ire of Bangladesh’s longtime Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who accuses him of “sucking blood” from the poor.
Hasina has launched multiple stinging verbal attacks on the internationally acclaimed Nobel Peace Prize winner from 2006, who was once regarded as a political competitor.
Yunus and three colleagues from Grameen Telecom, one of his companies, were accused of breaking labor regulations when they neglected to establish a workers’ benefit fund.
The charges were denied by all four. A tiny gathering in support of Yunus was held outside the court.
“I have been punished for a crime that I haven’t committed,” Yunus told reporters after the hearing.
“If you want to call it justice, you can.”
Yunus is also facing over 100 other allegations related to labor code violations and alleged graft.
After one of the hearings last month, he told reporters that he had not benefited from any of the more than 50 social business firms he had established in Bangladesh.
“They were not for my personal benefit,” Yunus said at the time.
Another of his lawyers, Khaja Tanvir, told reporters that the case was “meritless, false, and ill-motivated.”
“The sole aim of the case is to harass and humiliate him in front of the world,” Tanvir said.
Irene Khan, a former Amnesty chief now working as a UN special rapporteur who was present at Monday’s verdict, told newsmen that the conviction was “a travesty of justice.”
