Bangladesh needed three months to find a replacement for Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, who resigned in May after losing an age-discrimination lawsuit, Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith said Sunday.
"A managing director of the bank will be appointed for three months while a committee searches for a suitable replacement for Yunus," Abdul Muhith told reporters after a meeting with US embassy official Nicholas Dean.
Yunus, 70, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with his Grameen Bank in 2006, resigned on May 13 after a court upheld a rule requiring him to retire at the age of 60.
Grameen Bank was criticised in a 2010 Norwegian documentary that alleged Yunus transferred 100 million dollars given to the bank by the Norwegian state development agency and other donors to Grameen Kalyan - a sister non-profit entity - in 1996 without respecting procedures laid down by the donors. Yunus denied any wrongdoing. A government investigation found no corruption in the bank's fund management, but it said the fund diversion did not meet Grameen's own guidelines.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed has accused Yunus, who briefly set up his own rival political party in 2007, of using "tricks" to avoid taxes and "sucking blood from the poor" with his bank's loans, which are small sums lent to the poor, a population not served by traditional banks. An investigating commission found that interest rates on Grameen's collateral-free loans were still lower than that at other banks.
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