Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and six of his Grameen Telecom colleagues on Monday filed a petition with the High Court, seeking a directive to cancel charges of embezzlement of Tk 25.22 crore from the Grameen Telecom workers’ fund.
The bench of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Kazi Ebadoth Hossain will hear the petition today, court officials told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·.
On June 12, the Dhaka special judge court 4 Judge Syed Arafat Hossain framed fund embezzlement charges against Yunus, six of his colleagues and seven others.
The 13 other accused are the Grameen Telecom managing director Nazmul Islam, directors Ashraful Hassan, Nazneen Sultana, Parvin Mahmud, M Shahjahan, Nurjahan Begum, and SM Huzzatul Islam Latifee, Sramik-Karmachari Union president Kamruzzaman, general secretary Firoz Mahmud Hasan and representative Mainul Islam, Jatiya Workers Federation office secretary Kamrul Hasan, and lawyers Zafrul Hasan Sharif and Md Yousuf Ali.
Yunus and 13 accused are remained on bail.
The court set July 15 for recording depositions of prosecution witnesses.
There is a specific allegation of embezzling of Tk 25.22 crore from Grameen Telecom Workers’ Profit Participation Fund by its board members, and its Collective Bargaining Agency members and lawyers by transferring the fund through various Bank accounts,’ the court said in the charge framing order.
The court also said that it would depend on evidence if the disputed Settlement Agreement that was signed on April 27, 2022 to pay to Grameen Telecom workers was illegal or forged.
Yunus, also the chairman of Grameen Telecom, and his six colleagues prayed for cancellation of the charges, citing 16 reasons in the petition.
The Workers’ Welfare Fund and Workers’ Profit Participation Fund are primarily labour-related legislations and are governed by Bangladesh Labour Act, 2006 and Bangladesh Labour Rules, 2015, said the petition.
It also said that Yunus and his Grameen Telecom colleagues were private persons, and the entire amount of Tk 437,01,12,621, as mentioned in the first information report of the case and the charge sheet, was the legal entitlement of a list of 164 employees out of profits of Grameen Telecom and not public money or public fund.
It said that the case did not disclose any fraudulent intention on the part of Yunus and Grameen Telecom employers to deceive any employee in distributing profit from Workers Profit Participation Fund.      Â
The petition said that the money laundering case against Yunus and his colleagues was a glaring example of abusing the law.
It also mentioned that the case was filed against Yunus because of his face value although no offence was constituted over the payment to the workers.
On February 1, the Anti-Corruption Commission submitted a charge sheet to the court against the 14 accused in the case.
Earlier on May 30, 2023, the ACC deputy director Gulshan Anwar Prodhan filed the case with its integrated district office in Dhaka-1.