Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus was appointed as the head of the interim government, a day after Sheikh Hasina left the country on August 5, Dhaka Tribune reported on Tuesday. President's Press Secretary Joynal Abedin confirmed the information on Tuesday.
The decision was made during a meeting between President Shahabuddin and the coordinators of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, Dhaka Tribune reported. This came after Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin said an interim government would be formed after dissolving the parliament as Hasina fled the country.
Who is Dr Muhammad Yunus?
- Yunus, 84, a Nobel Laureate Professor, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering microcredit to help impoverished people, especially women, while the Grameen Bank, which he had founded, also secured the prize on the same occasion. He faces over 150 other cases, including major corruption charges that could see him jailed for years if found guilty while the economist denies all wrongdoing.
- Yunus was born in 1940 in the city of Chittagong and studied at Dhaka University in Bangladesh. He received a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University and received his PhD in 1969, after which he became an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University. His major accomplishment was the formation of the Grameen Bank, which gives loans to poor people without any collateral.
- According to the Nobel Prize website, Yunus was a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women, a post to which he was appointed by the UN secretary general. He has served on the Global Commission of Women’s Health, the Advisory Council for Sustainable Economic Development and the UN Expert Group on Women and Finance.
- He entered Bangladeshi politics in 2007 by forming his Nagorik Shakti (Citizen Power) party and planned to contest the upcoming election amid a state of emergency and severe conflict between Sheikh Hasina's Awami League and Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). He dropped his efforts to establish the party after lack of support but has maintained his fierce criticism of Hasina's government.
- A Dhaka court indicted him for embezzling more than $2 million from the dividends of the employees of a telecom company. The prosecution has accused Yunus and the others of embezzling Taka 250 million (more than $2 million) from the workers welfare fund of Grameen Telecom. The criminal trials held against him were condemned by eminent world leaders including former US President Barack Obama.
