Muhammad Yunus’s anti-corruption pledge crumbles amid allegations of power abuse, privilege

DHAKA (Bangladesh): In less than seven months into his tenure, Bangladesh’s Chief Advisor, Muhammad Yunus, began to fall short of his lofty promises to prioritise rooting out corruption. This raised serious concerns about his commitment to the anti-corruption cause.

In an article published by Anjuman A Islam in Eurasia Review, since assuming control of Bangladesh’s interim government on August 8, Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Laureate, vowed to make rooting out corruption his top priority. He declared that his mission was to rebuild Bangladesh, with a focus on eliminating the abuse of state power and ushering in a new era of accountability. Despite his initial proclamations to the world, Yunus and his advisors have been accused of engaging in practices that contradict the values they promised to uphold.

Anjuman highlighted that a recent report by a Bangladesh newspaper revealed several of Yunus’s advisors have been using multiple vehicles meant for public service, diverting them for personal use and violating the rules that allow only one vehicle per advisor. This misuse of taxpayer-funded resources has sparked outrage, especially as it comes amid Yunus’s promises of transparency and accountability.

He further stated, “Alarmingly, all the advisors and the office of Yunus sought to brush this glaring abuse by advisors under the carpet until the newspaper broke the massive irregularities that Transparency International Bangladesh’s chapter executive Director Iftekharuzzaman called a glaring violation with the spirit of the July August revolution.”

This blatant misuse of state power by his advisors has further damaged Yunus’s attempt to portray the Awami League as the sole source of corruption in the country.

In a sharp contrast to his anti-corruption rhetoric, Yunus has also faced backlash for the swift approval of large-scale business ventures linked to him and his associates. Within just two months of taking power, his microcredit institution, Grameen Bank, was granted a five-year tax exemption, and other businesses connected to Yunus or his family members received rapid government approvals, Anjuman mentioned in his article.

One such approval overturned a prior High Court ruling, exempting Yunus’s Grameen Kalyan organization from a staggering BDT 666 crore in taxes. Additionally, a private university—Grameen University—was approved, allegedly benefiting Yunus’s inner circle.

Meanwhile, labor rights activists, anti-corruption campaigners, and lawyers have expressed concerns over Yunus’s silence regarding the rapid acquittal of cases filed against workers from organisations he once led. These cases, filed before August 5, were swiftly dismissed without public explanation, raising further doubts about the integrity of Yunus’s administration, as cited in the Eurasia Review article.

What began as an ambitious reform agenda, driven by promises of a corruption-free Bangladesh, now risks descending into a scandal-ridden administration. (ANI)