WITLESS ago

Yunus sit on the board at the united nations.

AliensInParis ago

Not sure if this is related but FBIAnon said that Muhammad Yunus needs to be looked into. He also said to be careful with this name. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in developing the Grameen Bank. He is a pioneer of microcredit and microfinance.

I'm not going to look into him, but if you do please be careful. FBIAnon stressed that he would be "a dangerous one to look into". I imagine it could be because he's involve somehow,

zoltan907 ago

Yunus was a Clinton Foundation donor, and one of his charities, Yunus Social Business GmbH, teamed up with the Clinton Foundation in Haiti to "solve social and environmental issues in Haiti by bringing sustainable, productive, and socially responsible forests to the country" via the Haiti Forest initiative.

Clinton Foundation press release: http://archive.is/v1xlv

From the Washington Examiner: http://archive.is/rhcC7

"But Grameen Bank drew international attention after a Danish filmmaker alleged Yunus had taken part of $100 million of aid money from the microcredit operation and put it into Grameen Kalyan, an affiliated healthcare nonprofit.

"Some reports suggested Yunus had set up dozens of smaller companies to avoid paying Bangladeshi taxes.

"Clinton and Melanne Verveer, the ambassador-at-large for global women's issues, communicated directly with Grameen Bank during the government's investigation, new emails show.

"Additional emails included in past releases, as well as some obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, paint a picture of the deep concern Clinton held for the probe of Grameen Bank.

"An email chain obtained by Citizens United, a conservative watchdog group, shows the Clinton Foundation was also in direct contact with executives at Grameen Bank. In June 2012, a foundation employee forwarded a translated statement from Yunus to Clinton's top aides.

"'In case you haven't seen this already, WJC wanted HRC and you to see this,' wrote Amitabh Desai, director of foreign policy at the Clinton Foundation, to two of Clinton's top aides. Desai was referring to Clinton and her husband by their initials.

"David Bossie, president of Citizens United, suggested Clinton's decision to get involved with the investigation of Grameen Bank was unethical regardless of the circumstances of the probe.

"'At the end of the day, you have Secretary Clinton traveling to a foreign country on an official trip urging a foreign government to stop investigating a donor to the Clinton Foundation,' Bossie said....

"Two of Yunus' organizations, Grameen Research and Grameen America, donated to the Clinton Foundation, donor records show. He has been heavily involved with the Clinton Foundation for years.

"For example, in March 2013, Bill Clinton announced that the Clinton Foundation and one of Yunus' own charities would team up in Haiti to build 'socially responsible forests.'

"Yunus has frequently attended Clinton Global Initiative events, speaking at a number of the charity's glitzy annual meetings.

"Hillary Clinton publicly backed Yunus in May 2012 after meeting with him in his native Bangladesh. She chastised the government for its interference with Grameen Bank....

"Her emails indicate she kept tabs on Yunus' situation while serving as secretary of state. Much of the State Department's internal discussions about him and Grameen Bank have since been classified.

"In February 2011, the president of the Grameen Foundation sent Verveer an email with the subject line 'Latest Grameen Update.' The entire email is now classified.

"Verveer forwarded the update to Hillary Clinton and informed the former secretary of state that Yunus would be in town the following month for a press conference promoting his work with microfinance, which Verveer herself was slated to attend.

"But Yunus ultimately did not make the event because he was not permitted to leave Bangladesh.

"'Sorry, I have to cancel my trip to the US,' Yunus wrote in March ahead of a planned appearance alongside Clinton at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. 'Situation does not allow me to leave the country. Sorry for the inconveniences.'"

zoltan907 ago

From a 2011 Guardian article (http://archive.is/rtyUN)::)

"[A] Danish investigative journalist, Tom Heinemann, has made a film looking at microfinance and Yunus's Grameen bank in Bangladesh. In addition to the now well-known criticisms of heavy-handed debt collection and high rates of interest and indebtedness, Heinemann has uncovered a complex financial transaction in the early 1990s at Grameen bank. He says a significant sum of money is unaccounted for. He insists he has no evidence of any corruption, but he does have documentation that the donor, the Norwegian government aid agency, was very cross but agreed to keep quiet on the issue.

"A version of the film was broadcast in Norway in late November and caused uproar in Bangladesh (when it appeared in Norwegian on YouTube). The Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, weighed into the row in a press conference calling for an investigation into the Grameen bank – which received millions in aid from several western countries in the early 1990s. She declared that the Grameen bank had been 'sucking money out of the people after giving them loans. There has been no improvement in the lifestyle of the poor so far. They were just used as pawns to get more aid.'"

Also from the Guardian in 2011: http://archive.is/P2sQm

"Pioneered in Bangladesh in the late 1970s, microfinance involves granting small loans that no conventional bank would give to the very poor, allowing them to launch small-scale economic ventures. Around 30 million households in India have received £4bn in such loans over the past 15 years.

"In recent months, however, the industry has been thrown into crisis as it has become clear that a significant number of borrowers – between a tenth and a third, depending on the estimate – cannot afford to repay their loans.

"At the heart of this financial and social disaster is the central state of Andhra Pradesh, where the past five years have seen the aggressive selling of loans to often illiterate villagers, followed by equally aggressive debt collection.

"'I have nothing, less than nothing left,' said Victoria Bandari, who lives in a one-room mud and brick home in Palivelupa. 'All I have is debt, which I will pay for the rest of my life.'"

The government asked Yunus to resign, saying he was past retirement age and guilty of financial irregularities. http://archive.is/kb7xo

"Last week, Bangladesh's finance minister said Yunus should stand down following alleged irregularities in operations.

"Abul Maal Abdul Muhith called Yunus a 'man of high standing and respect' but 'now old'. The minister, who is 77, said: 'We need to redefine the bank's role and bring it under closer regulation.'

"Supporters of Yunus fear politicians want to bring Grameen under government control. Yunus did not respond directly to the minister's comments but told reporters: 'Any transition [would] essentially require a friendly environment and support from the inside and outside stakeholders of the bank to ensure that we continue to be totally committed to our mission for and with the poor.'

"Other government comments have been less polite. In December, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, accused Yunus of treating Grameen as his personal property and claimed the group was 'sucking blood from the poor'.

"Supporters have branded the claim as grotesque, especially as Yunus has won a Nobel prize for his work on reducing poverty.

"He has appeared in a Dhaka court to face charges that one of his social business ventures resulted in the sale of contaminated yoghurt.

"He has also had to answer claims made in a Norwegian television documentary last year that Grameen transferred funds from Norway's aid agency in the 1990s from one legal entity to another for tax purposes. The Norwegian government said an inquiry had found no evidence of wrongdoing....

"An international campaign to defend Yunus has been launched. The high-powered Friends of Grameen, chaired by Mary Robinson, the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights and one-time president of Ireland, condemned 'the campaign of misinformation' against Yunus in a statement last week. It said the 'increasingly aggressive attacks' on Yunus were 'politically orchestrated'.

"Other members include James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president, Yeardley Smith, the French-born American actor, and Liam Black, a UK-based social entrepreneur.

"'It is vital that Grameen Bank remains an independent financial resource for the poor of rural Bangladesh,' Black said. 'The bullying and insulting of Yunus as a "blood sucker" and the pathetic attempts by the government to remove him on grounds of his age must stop.'"

Hillary spoke out in support of Yunus. After Yunus resigned from a group called the "Elders," he became a regular at international conferences, including a youth leadership conference called One Young World. http://archive.is/aeHZk

"The campaign against Yunus began to draw attention. Fifty charities and public figures led by former Irish president Mary Robinson said Yunus was the target of 'increasingly aggressive attacks' that were 'politically orchestrated'. The New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff accused the prime minister of 'mounting a scorched-earth offensive' against Yunus. The professor even received backing from the then-US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton....

"These days, Professor Yunus spends a lot of his time travelling. Since stepping down in 2007 from the 'Elders' – the elite group of elder statesman and world leaders that includes Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu – to concentrate on his work (the first person to leave the exclusive group), he has become a perennial conference-goer. Today is no different. He bounces through the hallways of the convention centre hosting the One Young World conference – established to nurture the leaders of tomorrow – stopping occasionally to bat away praise or answer a question from a precocious young delegate....

"After telling the youngsters at the One Young World conference – where he was greeted by the screams of 1,000 vuvuzelas – that they should 'take chances', he confirms later that he thinks 'The world will be changed by young people. After all, it is my generation who got things wrong. We have created a world that is not happy. We created poverty and unemployment. But these kids still don't realise how powerful they are.'"

WITLESS ago

Bangladesh microloans.

DarkMath ago

Great work anongirl. It warms my heart that so many people care about doing what's right. :-)

2impendingdoom ago

This is good work.

derram ago

https://archive.is/nuyka :

India: Baby trafficking racket busted as police warn more children at risk - CNN.com

https://archive.is/AjdwQ :

Inside the brutal and hopeless world of Mumbai's trafficked teenage sex slaves | World news | The Guardian

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