The Clinton family has been a friend of Yunus since the 1980s. But the friendship became visible when US President Bill Clinton visited Bangladesh in March 2000.

In the following years, Yunus’ achievements kept soaring—awards and degrees, along with new branches of the Grameen Bank and Yunus’ social business centres.

In 2006, Yunus and Grameen Bank were given the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below”. In fact, if microcredit had been so successful, Yunus should have received the Nobel economics award.

Critics say he was given the award to make him look fit for the role of chief adviser to the caretaker government in Bangladesh, which had been facing turmoil since 2004 regarding the national elections.

When the army captured power, they forced President Iajudin Ahmed to resign and declare an emergency on January 11, 2007. They offered Yunus the post of chief adviser. But as he declined to assume office, another pro-US economist stepped in, presumably advised by the deep state actors funded by the Democrats and the Soros family.

Yunus and many of his civil society gang members were behind the curtain throughout the two years of the illegal interim government, which aimed at annexing the Awami League and the BNP, rehabilitating the Jamaat-e-Islami and creating a new force.

Yunus even formed his party, the Nagorik Shakti, in February–only to withdraw from politics in May following criticisms for conducting political activities publicly amid a state of emergency. He praised the 1/11 government many times, suggesting that the interim government stay in power for at least five years for a significant change.

Since 2004, the Open Society Foundations have provided funding for a range of human rights and justice issues in Bangladesh, including support for the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, freedom of expression, justice, accountable government, and education.

Open Society’s engagement with Bangladesh has included significant cooperation with BRAC, the nongovernmental organization that is now one of the world’s largest nonprofit groups working on international development.

George Soros is unpopular for funding organizations, institutions, and political parties across the world for regime change.

After the Awami League came to power in 2009, when the irregularities and misdeeds of Grameen Bank started to be exposed, Prof Yunus sought Hillary Clinton’s help. In an email on September 17, Dr Yunus asked Hillary to “find a way to clear her [Sheikh Hasina] mind of all the terrifying thoughts” she had about him and become a peacemaker.

On January 9, 2011, the US Embassy in Dhaka emailed the State Department to notify the top officials that Foreign Minister Dipu Moni had a meeting with diplomats to brief them about the government’s impending announcement of an investigation committee to deal with the allegations surfaced in a Norwegian TV documentary.

On February 6, 2011, Grameen Foundation President Alex Counts shared a web link with Melanne Verveer, the Chief-of-Staff to Hillary, of the New York Times article on Bangladesh launching an inquiry into Dr Yunus’ wrongdoings.

On May 5, 2011, Hillary expressed her frustration after Dr Yunus lost the last legal battle to stay in Grameen Bank as the MD, the proceedings the Dhaka Embassy and the State Department were following closely.

On January 6, 2012, Dan Mozena, Ambassador to Bangladesh, sent an email to Hillary via State Department officials, informing her of Melanne’s visit to Dhaka.

On May 8, 2012, the State Department officials shared a news report where Bangladesh Finance Minister AMA Muhith slammed Hillary for her comments that she hopes Bangladesh’s government will not interfere in internationally acclaimed microlender Grameen Bank were unwarranted. Muhith said the government never meddled in the Bank and denied claims by Dr Yunus that the administration was trying to take it over.

On June 27, Senator Barbara Boxer, under the influence of Hillary, led the women of the United States Senate in writing to PM Sheikh Hasina, urging her to allow the Bank’s Board of Directors to appoint a managing director.

In early August the same year, Vidar Jorgensen, President and Founder of Grameen America and Grameen Research, and Advisor to Grameen Trust and Grameen Health Trust, thanked Hillary for “all the support from the US for Professor Yunus and the independence of the Grameen Bank” and her “exceptional support in this area.”

On August 2, Alex Counts, President of Grameen Foundation, in an email said the Bangladesh government’s actions, including confirmation of a new “audit” of Dr Yunus personally, had “all the makings of a threatened witch hunt to intimidate — not very subtle.”

Melanne also wrote to Gene Ludwig, a former comptroller of the currency and founder of Promontory family of companies and Canapi LLC, the largest financial technology venture fund in the US, seeking his support for Dr Yunus and Grameen Bank.

On August 4, Gene replied, saying that he had “set up a foundation to support him [Dr Yunus], hired attorneys and producing legal memoranda.”

Hillary was happy to know about the development. “…please tell Gene how much I appreciate his efforts,” she replied to Melanne.

The same day, Gene shot an email to his confidants, saying Grameen Bank and Dr Yunus were under serious threat. The receivers included Mark Willis, Robin Golden, Nathan Steinwald, Martin Gruenberg, Steven Harris, Sarah Ludwig, Catherine Bessant, David Vitale, Thomas Curry, Donald Riegle, Robert Post, Christopher Edley, Strobe Talbott, Alice Rivlin, Robert Dugger, Albert Dwoskin, Michael Levy; Konrad Alt; Matthew Roberts, Warren Rudman, Kenneth Duberstein, Bob Barnett and Nicholas Tabor.

On the other hand, the State Department drafted the op-ed, headlined Keep Nobel-Prize Winning Bank Independent, for the Wall Street Journal, to be authored by George Shultz and Madeleine Albright. The final op-ed carried the headline: A Nobel Prize Winner Under Siege.

Donations to Clinton Foundation

The Associated Press reported that Prof Yunus met with Secretary Hillary three times during the course of the Bangladesh government investigation against him.

More than half the people outside the US government who met with Hillary, either personally or through companies or groups, gave money to the Clinton Foundation.

According to a review of State Department calendars, Grameen America, which is Grameen Bank’s nonprofit US flagship, gave between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, while another Grameen arm, chaired by Yunus, Grameen Research, has donated between $25,000 and $50,000.

At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, said the report.

Grameen America spokeswoman Becky Asch said the amount reflected the institution’s annual fees to attend CGI meetings.

American affiliates of his nonprofit Grameen Bank started working with the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative programs as early as 2005, pledging millions of dollars in microloans for the poor.

As a US senator from New York, Hillary, as well as then-Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and two other senators, sponsored a bill to award a congressional gold medal to Yunus in 2007. He got one, but not until 2010, a year after Barack Obama awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Yunus first met with Clinton in Washington in April 2009. That was followed six months later by an announcement by USAID, the State Department’s foreign aid arm, that it was partnering with the Grameen Foundation, a nonprofit charity run by Yunus, in a $162 million commitment to extend its microfinance concept abroad.

USAID also began providing loans and grants to the Grameen Foundation, totalling $2.2 million over Hillary’s tenure.

Hillary pressured Hasina

The Daily Caller, a right-wing news media, published an exclusive where it stated that the US State Department under Hillary had pressured Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son and ICT adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, to cease government action against Prof Yunus.

According to the Daily Caller, their investigators discovered that State Department aides had threatened Joy, a US citizen, with the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to look into his financials.

Joy, who told them that in 2010 and 2012, US State Department officials frequently told him to ask his mother to drop investigations against Prof Yunus. Joy said he found it “astounding and mind-boggling” that the US government would behave in such a manner with one of its own citizens.

PM Hasina at the Munich Security Conference in February 2017 said that Hillary had phoned her on occasions for the same purpose. Around the same time (2012), the World Bank also cancelled a $1.2 billion loan for the construction of the Padma Bridge.

Joy, a resident of Falls Church in Virginia, lived less than 10 miles from the US capital of Washington DC. During his stay, he was frequently visited by US government officials who would relentlessly bring up the Yunus issue.

In 2017, the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary opened an investigation to find out whether former secretary of state Hillary Clinton used her position to intervene in an “independent investigation” against Prof Yunus by a “sovereign government” in Bangladesh.

Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the committee, in a letter asked the State Department to make former deputy chief of mission of the US Embassy in Dhaka Jon Danilowicz available for an interview with the committee staff.

Grassley wrote the letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on June 1, asking the State Department to provide some information by June 15. He posted the letter on his website.

The allegations of “special treatment” for Yunus include reports of a threatened IRS audit of Sajeeb Wazed living in the US, if he did not help quash the investigation of the “businessman and Clinton organisation donor, Dr Muhammad Yunus”.

“If the secretary of state used her position to intervene in an independent investigation by a sovereign government simply because of a personal and financial relationship stemming from the Clinton Foundation rather than the legitimate foreign policy interests of the United States, then that would be unacceptable,” Grassley wrote.

“Co-mingling her official position as secretary of state with her family foundation would be similarly inappropriate.”

“It is vital to determine whether the State Department had any role in the threat of an IRS audit against the son of the prime minister in retaliation for this investigation,” Grassley said in the letter.

Grassley wrote that emails show that State Department officials, including Clinton, and staff for the Clinton Foundation closely monitored an attempt to remove Yunus from his bank position in Bangladesh and that the US ambassador to Bangladesh sought meetings with the prime minister “to apply pressure in an attempt to end the investigation into Yunus”.

Some of the individuals he met with include former ambassadors in Dhaka James Moriarty and Dan Mozena, Deputy Chief of Mission Danilowicz and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah.

Sajeeb Wazed recounted two conversations with Danilowicz, during which Danilowicz mentioned that Wazed may be audited by the IRS if he failed to use his influence to get his mother to drop the investigation into Yunus.

He also said that, according to Grassley’s letter, sometimes officials from the State Department were “apologetic” when repeatedly delivering the message concerning Yunus and made clear that they were just acting as messengers from the highest levels of the State Department.

“Furthermore, he was told by these same officials that Yunus was communicating with Secretary Clinton and her staff for assistance, and, in turn, Secretary Clinton’s staff put pressure on the embassy in Bangladesh to intercede on Yunus’ behalf”.

Protect Yunus campaign

Gene Ludwig was among the 40 world leaders who, from the fields of politics, diplomacy, business, the arts, and academia, sent the letter below to Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina regarding her government’s treatment of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus on March 7, 2023.

This open letter was also published as a full-page ad in the Washington Post.

A news report on the open letter can be accessed on the website Protect Yunus, which was launched on March 8, 2017.

The second letter was issued on August 28, 2023, with 190 global leaders, including 108 Nobel laureates, calling on Sheikh Hasina to desist.

“This letter, which was done in solidarity with 34 courageous Bangladeshi leaders who issued their own statement of support,” was published as a full-page ad in the international edition of the New York Times on August 31, just as Professor Yunus’ “trial” resumed.

It said for the last 13 years, the government of Bangladesh under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been “persecuting Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, as part of a much broader assault on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law in Bangladesh.”

On August 29, 2023, Hillary called upon individuals worldwide to rally behind Nobel laureate Dr Yunus, who was facing a trial related to labour law violations. Her impassioned plea was shared on X, where she attached the open letter.

After a court sentenced Yunus on January 1, 2024, some 247 global leaders, including 127 Nobel laureates, deemed the verdict “unjust”. They wrote a third open letter to Sheikh Hasina, calling for her to end this travesty of justice.

It was published as a full-page ad in the Washington Post on January 29.

The Gang celebrated the ouster of Sheikh Hasina and Yunus’ assumption of office as the chief adviser at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York on September 24, 2024.

Their friendship dates back to the 1980s, when Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, invited Yunus to visit and share his approach to alleviating poverty through small loans, which had successfully empowered impoverished Bangladeshi women without access to traditional banking services, according to The Business Standard.

“You’re the only old guy I know who was ever drafted for his eminent position by the young people of his country,” Clinton quipped about Yunus’s elevation to interim leader. “That’s because he has succeeded in doing what we all must do: we all have to stay in the future business,” he added.

The following day, US President Joseph R Biden, Jr. met with Yunus to congratulate him on his recent appointment as the head of the interim government. Both leaders affirmed the close partnership between the United States and Bangladesh, which is rooted in shared democratic values and strong people-to-people ties. President Biden welcomed further engagement between the two governments and offered continued US support as Bangladesh implements its new reform agenda, according to a message by the US Embassy in Dhaka.

Yunus’ main partner in crime, Hillary Clinton, got the scope to greet him on April 16, 2025, when Time Magazine recognized him among the 100 Most Influential People of 2025.

She lauded him for championing microcredit in Bangladesh and across the world, saying, “…I have witnessed the extraordinary impact of his work—lives transformed, communities lifted, and hope reborn.”

Terming Sheikh Hasina an “authoritarian”, Hillary said Yunus stepped up to guide the nation toward democracy. “Now, Yunus has answered his country’s call once more. As he shepherds Bangladesh out of the shadows of oppression, he is restoring human rights, demanding accountability, and laying the foundations for a just and free society.”