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.

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

Recently, the Daily Caller, a right-wing news media published an exclusive where it stated that the US State Department under Hillary Clinton had pressured Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son and ICT advisor 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 IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to look into his financials.

Joy, who told them that 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 phone 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 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 the 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”.

Hillary’s efforts didn’t stop even after her term in office. On August 29, 2023, she called upon individuals worldwide to rally behind Nobel laureate Dr Yunus, who was facing a trial related to labour law violations.

Clinton’s impassioned plea was shared on X, where she attached an open letter. This letter, signed by 176 prominent figures, including an impressive roster of 105 Nobel laureates, urged an end to what they collectively term “the persecution” of Dr Yunus.