New Delhi: Bangladesh’s Supreme Court has ordered Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus to pay $1 million in taxes on $7 million in donations he made to three charitable trusts between 2011-2014. Said Monday.
Yunus is credited with lifting millions of people out of poverty through his microcredit bank, and won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for promoting economic development in his country. The Straits Times Informed.
The Supreme Court upholding the judgment of a lower court, ruled On Sunday, Yunus had to pay tax as the law does not exempt donations to trusts. The Professor Muhammad Yunus Trust, the Yunus Family Trust and the Yunus Center received 767 million taka ($9.4 million) in donations between 2011 and 2014. The court ordered to pay a total of 150 million taka.
Through Grameen Bank, which he founded in the 1980s, Yunus accomplished his work in eradicating extreme poverty in Bangladesh by providing microfinance loans to millions of rural women.
last year, Bangladesh’s anti-graft watchdog has launched an investigation to institutions chaired by Yunus. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also accused him of “drinking the blood of the poor” and blamed him for the World Bank pulling out of a bridge project amid allegations of corruption.
When the Padma Bridge near Dhaka opened in June 2022, Hasina suggested that Yunus should be “immersed in the river” to jeopardize its completion, the report said.
In March 2023, 40 global figures, including former UN chief Ban Ki-moon and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Published A joint letter asking Bangladesh to end “unjust” attacks and harassment targeting Yunus.