Bangladeshi Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus quits top post

Dhaka, May 12 (ANI): Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, founder of the pioneering Bangladeshi micro-lending Grameen Bank, has stepped down as its head over a long-running discourse with the government.

The BBC quoted Yunus as saying that he was quitting his post to prevent undue disruption of the bank's work.

Earlier this month, Bangladesh Supreme Court's seven-member bench of the appellate division headed by Chief Justice ABM Khairul Haque had passed a judgement that Yunus be removed from the post of the Managing Director of the Grameen Bank.

Seventy-one-year-old Yunus had launched the Grameen Bank in the late 1970s to offer microcredit to the poor, a model that was copied in developing countries around the world.

The Bangladesh central bank removed Professor Yunus, often referred to as "the world's banker to the poor", from his post last March because his role at Grameen Bank had allegedly violated laws that state public servants must retire at the age of 60. (ANI)