Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was illegally removed from his pioneering microfinance bank, his lawyers told a packed courtroom in Dhaka on Sunday, before the hearing was adjourned. Yunus, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006 for his concept of small cash loans to help tackle poverty, attended the Dhaka High Court hearing into whether the central bank was within its legal rights to sack him from Grameen Bank.
Attorney General Mahbubui Alam told AFP that the court would reconvene on Monday. Yunus, 70, was dismissed as managing director of Dhaka-based Grameen Bank on Wednesday in what his supporters said was the culmination of a political vendetta against him.
He has defied the central bank order, returning to work at Grameen's headquarters and lodging the High Court case contesting his dismissal. "The Bangladesh Bank has not been vested with the power to appoint or remove people from Grameen Bank," Yunus's lawyer Rokonuddin Mahmud told the court during a speech in which he compared Yunus to Nelson Mandela. Mahmud said claims that Yunus was "clinging to his job" at Grameen Bank were baseless, citing a March 2010 letter written by Yunus to Finance Minister A.M.A Muhith in which he asked to be allowed to step down as managing director.
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