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Top microfinancier Yunus battles to save job

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was battling to keep his job as the head of his pioneering microfinance bank on Tuesday after Bangladesh's central bank said he had passed retirement age and had to go. Bangladesh Bank sent a letter to the finance ministry saying that Yunus, who won the Nobel peace prize in 2006 for his work making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, should be removed from the Grameen Bank he founded.

The latest verdict adds to pressure on the 70-year-old to step down, following an earlier demand from Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith for Yunus to "stay away" from the bank.

Muhith, who met US ambassador James Moriarty on Monday to discuss Yunus, told AFP Tuesday that the government intended to deal with the banker "gracefully." "They (the United States) told us that he is a respected personality and they want us to treat him with respect. We told them that Yunus is a pride of Bangladesh," Muhith told AFP by phone.

The finance minister said the government had received the opinion from the central bank that Yunus had been "illegally" staying as the chief executive of the Grameen Bank.

"We have just received the report on Tuesday and we'll deal with it gracefully," he said.

Supporters of Yunus, including former Irish president Mary Robinson, say there is a campaign of politically orchestrated attacks on the Nobel laureate after he fell out with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2007.

The two fell out in 2007 when Yunus briefly proposed setting up a political party.

In December, Hasina accused the Nobel laureate of treating Grameen Bank as his "personal property".

Yunus has been summoned to appear in three separate court cases in Bangladesh over the last month, all nominally connected to Grameen, which is also being investigated by the government.

Muzammel Huq, who was appointed as the chairman of the board late last year, told AFP the letter clearly said Yunus being the bank's chief executive was "illegal and not valid".

"In the letter - a copy of which has been given to me - the central bank said he no longer can stay as the chief executive of the Grameen Bank because the retirement age of the bank is 60," he said. AFP

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