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Milam urges global efforts to save GB

Staff Correspondent
World leaders must discourage the government from proceeding with its move against Grameen Bank before it is too late to save the microlender, a former US ambassador to Bangladesh has said.
In a write-up in the Wall Street Journal, a leading US business daily on Tuesday, William B Milam also said the spectre of Bangladesh government's taking over the Nobel winning bank has been haunting it and its founder for the last 18 months. M any thought Prof Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, was imagining the threat but this month the ruling Awami League-led government showed signs of it with its recent move to amend the Grameen Bank Ordinance, he said.
Approving the proposed changes to the ordinance, the cabinet decided to push aside the microlender's elected board of trustees and vest power in the government-appointed chairman to form a committee to choose the new managing director.
Milam, now a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, added the decision marked a new turn in the campaign to vilify Nobel Laureate Prof Yunus, which began last year when the government removed him as managing director.
"Then it ginned up a controversy that microlenders were 'loan sharks' when the opposite is true: These banks give poor borrowers an alternative to usurious moneylenders," he said.
"This time, the cabinet impugnedYunus's honesty by asking questions about whether he followed bank rules on tapping the bank's credit facilities when he was managing director. Il also alleges that he wrongly received tax exemptions on his foreign earnings. Last week, it opened a tax investigation."
Milam visited Dhaka in May last, the month Prof Yunus stepped down from Grameen Bank.
"Many Bangladeshis I respect told me then, and still think today, that the Awami League is out to gel Yunus by any means possible. The politicians believe, wrongly, that he is a long-term threat to their interests."
"Most Bangladeshis say that Grameen Bank now provides low-hanging fruit for what is perceived as a corrupt government. Officials can loot the bank's substantial assets at will now. They can also tap its customer base of women borrowers and turn them into a serious vote bank by promises of loan reductions or write-offs."
Grameen Bank has deposits and other funds of over $ 1.5 billion, outstanding loans of some $984 million and more than 25,000 employees.
Milam said world leaders needed to take note of these perverse motivations in Dhaka and condemn them, but they were not doing so.
I Ie said he had shared his concerns about the future of Grameen Bank with the South and Central Asian Bureau of the US Stale Department after his visit to Dhaka, but its reaction was tepid then.
"Now, more than a year later with news of the cabinet's decision, I am told they are'workingon it'."
Milam alleged that for all the laurels Prof Yunus has received from the West, his strategy to protect the bank he founded didn't work, partly because Western governments failed him.
"In the 15 months since the attack on Grameen Bank began, the US and others have let themselves be distracted by other business and lulled into complacency by Ms Sheikh Hasina's waiting game."
"Now it may be too late to save the bank. The US is playing catch-up on an issue on which it had an early warning. By this time, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is not inclined to listen to other governments and back off her determined course. I am sure it will lake more than words to deflect it."
"It is thus with a heavy heart that we must prepare for the disappearance of the pioneer of microfinance and the marginalisation of its visionary founder," he added.