In Bangladesh and the world, while Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus is known as the god of microcredit, he also is known for his intimacy with former US President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. According to media reports, Prof Yunus also is one of the key donors of the Clinton Foundation. At the same time – to a large number of individuals, including investigative journalists, Yunus is known for his financial irregularities and crimes centering Grameen Bank.
Because of her intimacy with Yunus, Hillary Clinton came up to defend Muhammad Yunus – her friend and a major donor of Clinton Foundation. The Clintons have been projecting Muhammad Yunus as a savior of the poor and exerted their influence in getting him the Nobel Peace Prize as well as several awards in the United States.
On August 29, 2023 Hillary Clinton in a post on her ‘X’ handle said: “Stand with me and more than 160 other global leaders to support great humanitarian and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus in his moment of need”. Thousands of people from the United States and the world have commented on this tweet.
According to the US Congress, Hillary Clinton used hard-ball tactics against the Awami League government in Bangladesh in order to help her ruthlessly corrupt millionaire friend. The document shows Hillary Clinton deployed an array of high-powered officials at the Department of State, US Embassy in Bangladesh and World Bank to rescue Muhammad Yunus from corruption and financial crime charges.
Although the Clinton Foundation website earlier declared that Muhammad Yunus had donated US$300,000 from his millions of dollars deposited in various foreign banks, the link to this declaration on the Clinton Foundation website has been mysteriously removed by the Clintons. Similarly, the Clinton Foundation also has been deleting information related to a few more controversial donors of the Clinton Foundation.
A report from the Daily Mail said some of the claims involved allegedly illegal donations with the intent of buying influence with Hillary Clinton, who at the time was trying to become president. While Yunus’ net worth is estimated at US$10 million, his actual wealth size is much higher.
On June 1, 2017, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley asked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to respond to reports that Hillary Clinton tried to pressure Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by threatening her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy with an IRS tax audit while he was living in the United States. Link to this matter has also been mysteriously deleted from the website of Senator Chuck Grassley.
Back in January 11, 2007, an-army backed interim government came to power, Hillary Clinton made frantic bids in influencing the key figures of that government to consider Muhammad Yunus as the “new leader of Bangladesh”, by executing “minus-two formula” of forcing Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia into retirement and forced exile. The BBC reported April 7, 2007, that “the army would sponsor Nobel Peace prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus as a new leader”.
Hillary Clinton repeatedly and directly threatened Bangladesh on behalf of Muhammad Yunus, warning Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that the World Bank could revoke a previously approved US$1.2 billion loan to build the Padma Bridge. Subsequently, at the request of Yunus, Hillary Clinton had exerted direct influence of the World Bank officials, while it is also alleged that she had used the Federal Investigation Agency (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in blackmailing at least two key officials of the World Bank thus compelling them in cancelling the approved loan for the Padma Bridge.
Hillary Clinton took full advantage and wielded tremendous pressure as the United States being the largest donor to the World Bank, which in 2011 contributed US$1.50 billion to the bank.
Hillary Clinton’s notorious actions against the Padma Bridge project were designed to undermine and humiliate Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina – only female heads of the government in the Muslim world.
For more than three decades, Yunus oversaw the distribution of Grameen Bank “micro-credit loans” to the poor to set up small businesses. He was eventually regarded as a saint among many anti-poverty activists.
But he also got a big helping hand over the three decades Bill and Hillary Clinton actively promoted him and repeatedly showcased him as a celebrity figure at major Clinton Foundation functions.
The former president Bill Clinton is credited with launching a personal lobbying campaign to press the Nobel Committee to award its peace prize to Yunus. It did so in 2006.
The report of Hillary Clinton’s brass knuckle tactics and her use of the World Bank on behalf of a Clinton foundation donor Muhammad Yunus could widen an ongoing investigation by the US Congress, as Special Counsel John Durham recently has released reports on ‘Russia collusion’ allegation that Hillary Clinton had manufactured against Donald Trump.
Most of the people in the world who know Professor Muhammad Yunus are aware of his global influence, particularly his huge intimacy with former US President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and plenty of influential politicians and personalities in the United States.
Despite controversies and criticism, a large number of global leaders and figures see Professor Muhammad Yunus as a renowned economist and social entrepreneur from Bangladesh and they also believe he has made a significant impact on the world through his innovative ideas and initiatives. In their eyes, being a founder of the Grameen Bank, Professor Yunus has pioneered the concept of microcredit or small loans to poor people without collateral, and helped to lift millions of people out of poverty.
While jointly receiving the Nobel Peace Prize along with Grameen Bank from Professor Ole Danbolt Mjøs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee on December 10, 2006 for “their efforts to create economic and social development from below”, in presence of global dignitaries, Muhammad Yunus declared – “We can put poverty in the museum”. Commenting on Yunus, UK daily The Guardian in an article said: “For Nelson Mandela it was apartheid, for Mahatma Gandhi it was self-rule, for Prof Yunus it is poverty”.
Danish investigative journalist Tom Heinemann, revealed a number of secret documents proving how Muhammad Yunus back in the mid-90’s transferred 100 million dollars – where most was donated as grants from Norway, Sweden, Germany, the United States and Canada – to a new company in the Grameen-family – mostly owned by his family members – in order to dodge taxes.
Tom Heinemann also exposed how Muhammad Yunus was charging high-interest rates ranging between 21 to 37 percent from the vulnerable poor female borrowers, although Yunus was receiving the majority of the fund as grant from various countries in the world.
On December 6, 2010, Parminder Bahra in an article in The Wall Street Journal described irregularities of Muhammad Yunus in handling foreign funds.
According to The Hill, during the combined two decades she served as a U.S. senator and secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’s patrons regularly donated to her family charity when they had official business pending before America’s most powerful political woman.
The pattern of political IOUs paid to the Clinton Foundation was so pernicious that the State Department even tried to execute a special agreement with the charity to avoid the overt appearance of “pay-to-play” policy.
Still, the money continued to flow by the millions of dollars, from foreigners and Americans alike who were perceived to be indebted to the Clinton machine or in need of its help.
Back in 2016, the Associated Press published an investigative report based on logs of meetings Hillary Clinton took as Secretary of State. In the story, the AP stated that at least 85 of 154 people from private interests that Clinton met or had phone conversations with while Secretary of State donated to the Clinton Foundation. In total, the 85 donors contributed as much as US$156 million to the Foundation. Link to this AP report has been deleted.
Commenting on the Clinton Foundation scandal, Gersh Kuntzman in an article in the New York Daily news termed it – “impossible to defend”.
In February 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that Australia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and a Canadian government agency that was trying to get the Keystone XL pipeline built all donated to the Clinton Foundation.
In addition to receiving donations in exchange for favor, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had also followed a few more unethical tactics. For example, when she was secretary of state, Bill Clinton’s speaking fees magically doubles and tripled – from about US$150,000 a speech to US$500,000 for a speech in Russia and US$750,000 for a speech in China. The State Department had easily approved these speeches.
Bill Clinton raked in at least US$26 million from speaking to organizations that also donated to the Clinton Foundation.
According to Politico, Hillary Clinton was a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission while she was secretary of state. The commission was working on a “request to approve the sale of US uranium stock to Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom as part of a transitioned takeover of a company which through an earlier merger had acquired US uranium interests”.
A report in The New York Times revealed – Rosatom was having ties to the Clinton Foundation.
According to The Wall Street Journal, when IRS was suing Swiss bank UBS AG in order to obtain the identities of Americans who were using the bank to set up offshore accounts, Hillary Clinton immediately intervened into the matter. As a result, UBS increased donations to the Clinton Foundation – from US$60,000 to US$600,000 by 2014. It lent the foundation US$32 million for an inner-city loan program and paid Bill Clinton US$1.50 million for some speaking gigs with its Wealth Management Chief Executive, Bob McCann.
According to a 2018 report published in The Hill, a private firm named MDA Analytics LLC, which was run by accomplished ex-federal criminal investigators alleged the Clinton Foundation engaged in illegal activities and may be liable for millions of dollars in delinquent taxes and penalties.
The 48-page submission, dated August 11, 2017, supports its claims with 95 exhibits, including internal legal reviews that the foundation conducted on itself in 2008 and 2011.
Those reviews flagged serious concerns about legal compliance, improper commingling of personal and charity business and “quid pro quo” promises made to donors while Hillary Clinton was secretary of State.
According to a 2016 report published in The New York Post:
The inner workings of a mysterious off-the-books arm of the Clinton Foundation were partially revealed in the hacked emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
The little-known Haiti Development Fund, an LLC incorporated in Delaware in August 2010, was created by the Clinton Foundation with an initial endowment of $20 million from shady Canadian mining mogul Frank Giustra and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
The Fund was supposed to supply desperately needed seed money to Haitian entrepreneurs after an earthquake devastated the country in January 2010.
A 2016 report published in The Globe and Mail, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton earned millions from Canadian corporate elites while the couple was exerting influence on various foreign governments in favor of those elites and for such cooperation, Clintons were getting huge amounts through numerous ways including donation to Clinton Foundation.
On January 1, 2024, a labor court in Dhaka, Bangladesh sentenced Grameen Telecom chairman and controversial Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus and three others to six-months jail in a case filed against them for violating labor law.
According to the case documents, a team of the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments DIFE went on an inspection to the Grameen Telecom and found the violations of labor laws like not regularizing 101 staff, not establishing a welfare fund for the laborers, and not paying five percent of the company’s dividends to the workers, among others.
Yunus is clearly feeling nervous, because he is anticipating further investigation would expose more of his financial irregularities and crimes centering millions of poor – particularly females in Bangladesh and abroad.
Hillary Clinton is corrupt. So is her friend Yunus. It is a game of corrupts.