Grameen Bank chair's strange email
The Daily Star yesterday asked Muzammel to explain the reason for
sending the mail far and wide when he is the chairman of an
organisation that is now in trouble over the exit of its founder Prof
Yunus.
It is none other than the chairman of troubled Grameen Bank who is
spreading by email a damning article on the organisation he is meant
to hold together. (The Daily Star)
Muzammel Huq, the government-appointed chairman of the microlender,
emailed the article, "Yunusgate: If you can't convince, create
confusion", written by Nayeemul Islam Khan, editor of Bangla-language
daily Amader Shomoy.
The article that puts Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen
Bank in a negative light was posted on bdnews24.com on March 7
apparently for a wider readership.
Speaking to The Daily Star, two recipients confirmed that they have
received the article's link from Muzammel's email account.
In a post, a blogger questioned Muzammel's intention of sending the
article to a wider mailing list which he found on social network site
Facebook.
The list obtained by The Daily Star has 126 recipients including a
former president and two ministers of Bangladesh; aid organisations,
UN agencies, diplomatic missions and foundations at home and abroad;
and bankers and senior company executives.
The Daily Star yesterday asked Muzammel to explain the reason for
sending the mail far and wide when he is the chairman of an
organisation that is now in trouble over the exit of its founder Prof
Yunus.
"People should know different sides of a story and then decide what
they should or should not do," Muzammel said.
Pressed to comment further over the phone, he snapped: "I won't
discuss with you (The Daily Star correspondent) any contents of my
personal emails and why I did so. Why should I tell you about my
personal things?" Then he hung up.
Muzammel, one of Yunus' former deputies, has been a vocal critic of
the microcredit pioneer, and the promotion of a former employee came
as a surprise to many and gave clear signs at the time that the
government would oust Grameen's founder.
In response to Muzammel's email, David Bornstein, author of The Price
of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank, said: "As a journalist who
has written extensively about microcredit, and the author of a well
known book on Grameen, I am very interested in all matters relating to
the Bank.
"But the article is reminiscent of the kind of rant one hears from
"birthers" in the United States who assert that President Obama was
born in Kenya. The piece is a litany of innuendo and accusation --
most of which the reader is asked to take on sheer faith.
"But what is well known and substantiated is the fact that the
government of Bangladesh is consistently ranked one of the most
corrupt in the world. Billions in foreign aid have been siphoned off
by the government at the highest levels. Grameen, on the other hand,
has been an anomaly: a bank that does not sanction bribes, where
people do not get jobs through patronage, where the money actually
reaches the poor, and where borrowers do not renege on their loans and
get off scot-free because of family connections."
http://newsfrombangladesh.net/view.php?hidRecord=350389
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