DHAKA – US Senator John Kerry says he is “deeply concerned” by efforts to remove Muhammad Yunus from the Grameen Bank he founded and urged the Bangladesh government and Nobel laureate to reach a compromise. The 70-year-old economist was abruptly sacked as managing director of Dhaka-based Grameen Bank by Bangladesh’s central bank on Wednesday in what his supporters say was the culmination of a year-long vendetta against him.
Kerry, who heads the powerful US Senate foreign relations committee, said he hoped the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the 2006 Nobel peace prize winner could reach a “compromise” on the issue. “I am deeply concerned by efforts to remove Muhammad Yunus as managing director of the Grameen Bank,” he said in a statement late Friday.