Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Mohammed Yunis is possibly the most famous person in Bangladesh,
Speaker 2: a South Asian country with a population of more than
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy million. He's considered the father of microfinance,
Speaker 2: that means handing out tiny loans to low income or
Speaker 2: impoverished people looking to start businesses. The work earned him
Speaker 2: a Nobel Peace Prize in two thousand and six and
Speaker 2: a US Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Speaker 3: Offering himself as a guarantor, he withdrew a loan, paid
Speaker 3: off their debts, and founded Grameen Bank, a bank that
Speaker 3: has dispersed over eight billion dollars, lifting millions of people
Speaker 3: from poverty with micro loans. Mohammed Yunis was just trying
Speaker 3: to help a village, but he somehow managed to change
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: But now the eighty four ye year old economist is
Speaker 2: facing a possible life sentence in prison. This January, Unus
Speaker 2: was sentenced to six months in jail for violating labor laws,
Speaker 2: and he faces nearly two hundred charges, including accusations of
Speaker 2: money laundering and embezzlement. He denies all of them. It's
Speaker 2: a battle with Bangladesh's government that's been raging long before January.
Speaker 2: Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, the country's most powerful politician, has
Speaker 2: publicly criticized Yunus for years, and questions about the source
Speaker 2: of that animosity have swirled, whether it's Unus's influence abroad,
Speaker 2: political ambitions he's expressed in the past, or genuine critical
Speaker 2: eye on his businesses.
Speaker 1: The tone has only intensified over the years in terms
Speaker 1: of her seeing him not just as a threat of
Speaker 1: some kind, but also as someone who really just gets
Speaker 1: under her skin, someone who's created this public profile and
Speaker 1: has the backing of so much of the West.
Speaker 2: Really Bloomberg reporter Kai Schultz has been covering Unis's story
Speaker 2: and met with him while he was on bail at
Speaker 2: his home in Dhaka.
Speaker 1: He's facing serious allegations, but at the same time, he
Speaker 1: seemed fairly optimistic.
Speaker 4: Our position always we never committed these times, but he's there,
Speaker 4: so we have to go and fight those cases. Prime
Speaker 4: Minister looks at it in a different way, so basically
Speaker 4: it became a smear campaign against me.
Speaker 1: The government argues that the allegations have merit and that
Speaker 1: Unit's businesses aren't nearly as clean, as he claims, but
Speaker 1: as Western supporters say, the cases against Units are politically motivated.
Speaker 1: It's become a diplomatic crisis. Many Western governments are close
Speaker 1: to Units. They see him as a stable voice for
Speaker 1: Maan Ladesh, and they fear that Shei Casina has pushed
Speaker 1: the country in the direction of authoritarianism.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Big tach Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Wanha.
Speaker 2: Every week we take you inside some of the world's
Speaker 2: biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and
Speaker 2: businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today on the show,
Speaker 2: how one of the most celebrated economists in the world
Speaker 2: went from winning the Nobel Prize to facing life imprisonment,
Speaker 2: and what his complicated saga could mean for Bangladesh's future.
Speaker 2: Mohammad Yunis grew up in Chittagong, the second largest city
Speaker 2: in Bangladesh.
Speaker 1: He's from a pretty large family and his father was
Speaker 1: a jeweler. Growing up, it was fairly idyllic. He moved
Speaker 1: to the US in the nineteen sixties on a Fulbright
Speaker 1: scholarship and he remained there for a number of years,
Speaker 1: completing graduate studies and also teaching economics in Tennessee.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Sky Schultz told me how the poverty UNIS in
Speaker 2: Bangladesh would influence his life's work.
Speaker 1: At that point in time, Bangladesh was one of the
Speaker 1: most impoverished pockets of the world. Throughout the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: he would go out into villages and he would talk
Speaker 1: to people about the challenges that they faced overcoming poverty.
Speaker 1: And what he found is that many people had great
Speaker 1: ideas to build businesses, but they lacked the capital. He
Speaker 1: also found that a potential solution, the idea of giving
Speaker 1: a business loan to an entrepreneur, simply didn't exist. And
Speaker 1: when he brought that idea to local banks, they literally
Speaker 1: laughed in his face.
Speaker 2: This idea UNIS was developing microfinance.
Speaker 1: Microfinance is giving a loan to someone who lacks collateral,
Speaker 1: someone who can't approach a traditional bank, and someone who
Speaker 1: has a great idea that they want to implement. So
Speaker 1: it's a business loan and it's used to scale some
Speaker 1: sort of idea that an entrepreneur has.
Speaker 2: It was a revolutionary concept, one that went up against
Speaker 2: the conventional belief that people living in poverty were less
Speaker 2: likely to settle debts and In nineteen eighty three, Unis
Speaker 2: established his own institution, Ramin Bank. It was his counter
Speaker 2: to that belief and a way to put his economic
Speaker 2: theories into practice. Unis primarily made Grameen's microfinance loans available
Speaker 2: to women in remote areas of Bangladesh, and he found
Speaker 2: that they used that money more productively than men.
Speaker 1: Bangladesh is a majority Muslim country and they were typically
Speaker 1: very hierarchical. So in many cases he would have to
Speaker 1: bring a female associate because the women in the village
Speaker 1: simply would not talk to him. They would fear a
Speaker 1: censor from their husbands or from leaders in these communities.
Speaker 1: And once women did receive the money, because they were
Speaker 1: so used to managing households, they understood that this was
Speaker 1: another thing that had to be carefully managed in their lives.
Speaker 1: That they were less likely to spend it on things
Speaker 1: like alcohol, and that in many cases, the women were
Speaker 1: driving the economies of their families.
Speaker 2: By nineteen ninety eight, Gramin Bank was lending more than
Speaker 2: two billion dollars to millions of families. Unice's unconventional views
Speaker 2: on banking earned him a nickname Banker to the poor.
Speaker 2: He's met and hosted global leaders, dignitaries and business titans
Speaker 2: like Ted Turner, Banky Moon, and the Clintons. Globally, grimen
Speaker 2: Bank has inspired similar projects in more than one hundred countries,
Speaker 2: and Eunice has evangelized his views to the world for decades,
Speaker 2: like in a speech he gave at Harvard Innovation Labs
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve, I just.
Speaker 4: Look at the conventional banks how they do it. Once
Speaker 4: I learned how to do it, I just do the opposite.
Speaker 4: They go to the rich. I go to the poor.
Speaker 4: They go to men. I go to women. They go
Speaker 4: to the city center to do the business. I go
Speaker 4: to the remote village.
Speaker 1: Micro credit in Unis's work is widely seen as one
Speaker 1: reason why Bangladesh has managed to elevate itself to a
Speaker 1: lower middle income economy today.
Speaker 2: But as Eunice's star rose, so did scrutiny of his work.
Speaker 2: In twenty ten, a Norwegian documentary accused Unus of improperly
Speaker 2: moving nearly one hundred million in donations to an affiliated business.
Speaker 2: He was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, but one key person
Speaker 2: latched onto the controversy and continued to question the effectiveness
Speaker 2: of grimen Bank's loans Bangladeshi Prime Minister Shaik Hasina, in
Speaker 2: one of her sharpest rebukes of Eunice, Hassina, who was
Speaker 2: once his supporter, accused him of sucking blood from the poor.
Speaker 2: In twenty eleven, under pressure from the government, Unis resigned
Speaker 2: from his job as managing director of Grimen Bank. The
Speaker 2: government argued that he had exceeded the mandatory retirement age.
Speaker 1: This is the institution that he founded, it's the institution
Speaker 1: that made him famous, and now the government was arguing
Speaker 1: that he had exceeded a mandatory retirement limit. At that point,
Speaker 1: there really was a shift in tone and the government
Speaker 1: wasn't interested in entertaining the idea that Unis should or
Speaker 1: could stay on at Gramine Bank.
Speaker 2: Units challenged the order in court, but was rejected, and
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve, the government amended a law that effectively
Speaker 2: brought Gramin under state control. Unis went on to focus
Speaker 2: on a number of nonprofits under the Grimen Bank umbrella,
Speaker 2: like Gramine Telecom. It's a nonprofit that works to bolster
Speaker 2: mobile service in rural areas, the center of his current
Speaker 2: legal battle. But Eunice's legal war with Prime Minister Hasina
Speaker 2: seems to have just begun as he faces numerous charges.
Speaker 2: Eunice is in limbo on bail at home and waiting
Speaker 2: for the outcome of his pending trials. Kai wanted to
Speaker 2: understand whether any of these charges had merit and if
Speaker 2: there was a more complicated story there, so he visited
Speaker 2: Daka to hear from Unis himself.
Speaker 4: Everybody tries to find out what is the reason. Why
Speaker 4: is she against me? Did I do something to her
Speaker 4: to hurt her? Something hurt her interest? As I said,
Speaker 4: A billion dollar question.
Speaker 2: After the break. Kai on his interview with Eunis and
Speaker 2: what the economist's long standing feud with the Prime minister
Speaker 2: could mean for the future of Bangladesh. Mohammed Yunis, the
Speaker 2: Nobil Prize winning economist, rose to fame pioneering micro loans
Speaker 2: as a tool to fight poverty. He's currently facing trial
Speaker 2: in a money laundering case that could see him imprisoned
Speaker 2: for life. Bloomberg's Kai Schultz interviewed Unice at his home
Speaker 2: in the capital of Dacca.
Speaker 1: Hello His home was fairly modest considering his public profile.
Speaker 1: It's an apartment in a diplomatic quarter of Daca. It's
Speaker 1: on an upper floor of a high rise it's decorated
Speaker 1: with all kinds of travel momentos, pottery, portraits, pictures with
Speaker 1: his friends. He has a painting of him with his
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2: Uni says that he, his wife, and his younger daughter
Speaker 2: spend most of their time at home now. He was
Speaker 2: released on bail in January to appeal a sentence of
Speaker 2: six months in jail for labor law violations. When he's
Speaker 2: not at home, he's in and out of court.
Speaker 4: Look i'm here, I'm accused of money laundering. I'm accused
Speaker 4: of forgery, I'm accused of stealing money and all those
Speaker 4: kinds of things. Our position always we never committed these crimes,
Speaker 4: but it's there, so we have to go and fight
Speaker 4: those cases to establish our case that we never committed
Speaker 4: those grimes. Prime Minister looks at it in a different
Speaker 4: way that then I'm the blood secker of the poor people.
Speaker 4: So basically it became a smear campaign against me. Everybody
Speaker 4: tries to find out what is the reason. Why is
Speaker 4: she against me? So explanation is one is jealousy. She
Speaker 4: is not famous and I'm famous. That's kind doctor. Another
Speaker 4: one's political. She finds out a threat. I said, look,
Speaker 4: I'm not a politicians. This is the last thing I.
Speaker 1: Will ever do.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg reached out to Prime Minister Shaike Hasina's office for comment,
Speaker 2: but she declined an interview. Bangladesh's State Minister for Information
Speaker 2: told Bloomberg that the charge against Unice aren't political end quote.
Speaker 2: The law is taking its due course, and Kai says
Speaker 2: Unice's case and the outcome of this legal battle have
Speaker 2: real implications for Bangladesh and its emerging economy.
Speaker 1: Many Western governments are close to Unite. They see him
Speaker 1: as a stable voice for Bangladesh, and they fear that
Speaker 1: Shai Casina has pushed the country in the direction of authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: And so there's this perception that if Bangladesh can go
Speaker 1: after its most famous citizen, frankly, that it could really
Speaker 1: go after anyone, including people who are investing in Bangladesh
Speaker 1: and setting up businesses. So there's a fear that there
Speaker 1: could be a chilling effect and that foreign direct investment,
Speaker 1: which has already taken a hit in Bangladesh over the
Speaker 1: past few years for various reasons, could fall even further,
Speaker 1: and that Bangladesh, which is one of the fastest growing
Speaker 1: economies in the world, may no longer look as promising
Speaker 1: as it once did.
Speaker 2: For now, the entire Unice household is on edge, awaiting
Speaker 2: his fate in court. At home, the family keeps a
Speaker 2: bag packed just in case the house gets raided by authorities,
Speaker 2: and Unis says they're prepared for any outcome.
Speaker 4: Everything is affected in my personal life because this is
Speaker 4: not an easy thing. It's you have to go and
Speaker 4: spend your time in the jail, leaving your family back.
Speaker 4: And my wife is a demonstia patient. She depends totally
Speaker 4: on me. She has no sense of the world around her,
Speaker 4: So when I go to jail, what happens to her.
Speaker 1: Unice's life is very different from what he was used to.
Speaker 1: He was constantly traveling. Now he's often in Bangladesh.
Speaker 4: Friends in those countries invited me to be there. They're
Speaker 4: insisting that I should leave the country. And my argument is, look,
Speaker 4: I live here, this is where I began, this is
Speaker 4: all my colleagues who work with me. I can leave,
Speaker 4: but what happens to my colleagues, what happens to the
Speaker 4: work Detritia And I said, no, I'm not going to
Speaker 4: destroy everything that I built and we'll continue. And I
Speaker 4: don't see why I cannot do that.
Speaker 2: This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm
Speaker 2: one ha. This episode was produced by Young Young, Naomi
Speaker 2: and Jessica Beck. It was mixed by Alex Suguiera and
Speaker 2: fact checked by Naomi. It was edited by Aaron Edwards,
Speaker 2: Caitlin Kenny, and David Rocks. Additional reporting by Arune Devneth.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Bloomberg's Originals team. Our senior producers are
Speaker 2: Naomi Shaven and Kim Gettelson, and our senior editor is
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beemster Bower is our executive producer, and
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