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Dark chapter of a 'good' man 

News Desk | banglanews24.com
Update: 2023-06-01 11:57:27
Dark chapter of a 'good' man 

The High Court validated the issuance of notice by the National Board of Revenue (NBR) asking Nobel Laureate Professor Dr Muhammad Yunus to pay around Tk 12.5 crore taxes on his gifts to three trusts.

A division bench comprising Justice Muhammad Khurshid Alam Sarkar and Justice Sardar Md Rashed Jahangir passed the order on Wednesday rejecting petition of Dr Yunus challenging the notice of NBR.

Following the judgment, Dr Yunus is bound to pay the due taxes.
The apex court rejected three reference petitions filed by Professor Muhammad Yunus challenging Taxes Appellate Tribunal which upheld NBR decision.

In its judgment, the HC observed that Dr Yunus gifted the money to three of his trusts to evade taxes.

It appears from the High Court judgment that he used to evade taxes. The Bangla Insider is in possession of evidence of various irregularities including tax evasion committed by him. He was involved in forgery, embezzlement of state properties and tax evasion.

To gain without spending

Prof Yunus is very much vocal abroad to protect own interest but he remains indifferent towards problems of the country. He started microcredit business with a hype to send poverty to museum. In reality, he has amassed huge properties and become a billionaire. 

He deprived the poor people of their due rights and misappropriated state properties. The economist surprisingly got Nobel in peace prize without any contribution to peace. He earned millions of dollar by delivering lectures abroad. A question travels in public mind as to what he has done for the nation. 

He pursued the regime of HM Ershad to work for eliminating poverty and ensuring economic emancipation of the downtrodden people. The Ershad regime established Grameen Bank as per proposal of Dr Yunus who took over as Managing Director of the bank. The bank started its journey in 1983 with Tk 3 crore capital of which Tk 1.80 crore belonged to the government and Tk 1.20 crore to clients. 

Having zero investment of his own, Dr Yunus has become owner of everything. By dint of extraordinary merit, he pocketed the whole money. Abusing the bank, he has established 28 other organizations, his fortunes.

He formed Social Venture Capital Fund (SVCF) with the donation and loans to the bank. On October 7, 1992, he decided to establish another organisation with the money. Accordingly, Grameen Fund came into being as a limited company and he transferred 49.10 percent of the bank fund to it. 

Although the government was owner of the bank, Dr Yunus used to take all decisions. He formed the board of directors with ‘yes men’ so that nobody can raise voice. On December 19, 1993, the bank in its 34th board meeting decided to constitute Social Advancement Fund (SAF) but the donors objected to it and termed fund transfer forgery. 

Finding no way out, he adopted another strategy and proposed to constitute Grameen Kalyan at board meeting on April 25, 1996. Grameen Kalyan received Tk 69 crore from SAF of the Grameen Bank. Dr Yunus became Chairman of Grameen Kalyan which turned goose that laid the golden eggs.

In 1997, Dr Yunus got licence of Grameen Telecom (GTC) to work only for the welfare and betterment of the poor people. But, he handed over the lion shares of Grameen Phone Limited to the foreign company. At present, GTC owns 34.20% shares in Grameen Phone Limited against which it receives thousands crores of dividend per annum, Most of this dividend income from GTC is laundered abroad by Dr Yunus on the pretext of social business.

The individual employees initiated proceedings to enforce their lawful claim of participation in the 5% of net profit of the GTC by filing as many as 107 BLA (IR) Cases before the 3rd Labor Court, Dhaka in the year 2017. GTC filed about a hundred writ petitions challenging the interim orders of the Labour Court, passed in those IR Cases.

Aggrieved employees moved to the apex court and pending hearing of those writ petitions, the GTC terminated all the 99 employees who were in service vide a single notice on October 25, 2020. Challenging such illegal termination, separate applications were filed with the High Court by the individual employees praying for their reinstatement in their services. Later, Dr Yunus tempted the petitioner-employees to withdraw petitions in exchange for money.

GTC earned thousands of crores taka each year as dividend from Grameen Phone Ltd against its 34.20% shares in the capital of Grameen Phone. Out of this dividend, GTC shares 42.65% with Grameen Kalyan on the plea that it took a loan of Tk 53,25,62,941.00  at the time of acquiring share of Grameen Phone. Against such loan of Tk 53.25 crores, GTC has been sharing hundreds crores of dividend in each year.

After 2017, the amount of dividend income from Grameen Phone has increased substantially, and accordingly, the amount of dividend transferred to Grameen Kalyan after 2017 has risen. As such, till 2022, about Tk 5,000 has been illegally disbursed to the Grameen Kalayan as dividend against their loan of an amount of Tk53.25 crores only. The audit firm, in writing warned the management of GTC for such illegal transaction in 2017.

Dr. Yunus’ company GTC submits its annual returns to the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies And Firms (RJSC) with false statements that no dividend is distributed although thousands crores of dividends have been distributed to Grameen Kalyan over the years. Submitting false statements in the annual return is a punishable offence under section 397 of the Companies Act, 1994.

In 26 years of operation, Grameen Telecom has evaded nearly Tk 1,000 crore tax. On average, Dr Yunus has been dodging 15-25 percent tax annually. From 1997 to 2005, he dodged 25 percent tax of Grameen Telecom annually. The actual tax was 35 percent but he paid only 10 percent. From 2006 to 2008, he evaded 20 percent tax of telecom annually, paying 15 percent tax instead of 35 percent. Besides, he paid 20 percent instead of 35 percent tax dodging 15 percent per annum from 2009 to 2022, sources claimed.

Source: Bangla Insider

BDST: 1157 HRS, JUNE 01, 2023
 

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