Conspiracy, lies, treachery, diversion, ungratefulness, and blame games are the common features of Nobel laureate and former Grameen Bank managing director Prof Muhammad Yunus. He would take credit for positive elements and never admit his faults or crimes—be it a tax evasion case or benefits from a friend or well-wisher. He has no shame.

The Bangladesh Chief Adviser recently lied about his contact with the students while talking to Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times in a podcast in late January. See how:

Q: And where were you at this point?

Yunus: I was in Paris…

Q: And so how did you then get the call and come back?

Yunus: That day (August 5) when the first call came, I was in the hospital just for a small operation. So they called. I was watching the news everyday on the mobile phone what is happening in Bangladesh. They said she left. Now we have to have a government. Please form the government for us. I said, no, I’m not the one. I don’t know anything about it and I don’t want to get involved with it.

Q: Who was it who contacted you?

Yunus: Students. I don’t know these guys. Never heard of them. Never knew them…

But his lies were debunked by an adviser and leaders of his King’s party, the Jatiya Nagorik Party, in several Facebook posts recently.

Muhammad Yunus: A fraudster and hypocrite since childhood

How US State Department spread rumors to fuel Bangladesh’s July uprising

How Hillary Clinton abused power to help Prof Yunus and punish Sheikh Hasina

As rivalry grows, role of Yunus, US embassy, expat journos, Chhatra Shibir in July-August anarchy is exposed

Abdul Hannan Masud, a former student coordinator and now leader of the newly formed Jatiya Nagorik Party, a brainchild of Yunus, said he got the first message from Prof Yunus via US-based Right to Freedom’s former executive director and BNP-linked journalist based in Washington, Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey (now ambassador), on the evening of August 1.

Another coordinator, SM Shahed Emon, said the then-president of Islami Chhatra Shibir’s Dhaka University unit, Abu Shadik Kayem, was the first to contact the Nobel laureate via email on August 2 or 3. The email was written by DU Shibir’s general secretary (now president), SM Farhad.

Zulkarnain Saer, a sacked army officer who works for Bangla Outlook and the Al Jazeera investigation team, also confirms the correspondence between Kayem and Yunus.

The most credible information comes from interim government Adviser Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuyain, who, in a Facebook post, recently said that after being freed from the DB police custody on August 1, he contacted Badiul Alam Majumder and Prof Ali Riaz (made heads of two of the reform commissions). Then he reached out to Dr Yunus through his personal assistants—Moin Ahmed and Shabbir Ahmad. Asif added that he later spoke to Dr Yunus every day from August 2-5.

Civil society leader Badiul is the country director of the US-based charity The Hunger Project and founder-secretary of Citizens for Good Governance (SHUJAN). He became the chief of the commission on election commission reforms after the government changeover.

On the other hand, Ali Riaz, a Bangladeshi-American, is a distinguished professor at the Department of Politics and Government of Illinois University. He is also a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council and is associated with the Bangladeshi NGO, Centre for Governance Studies. Prof Yunus made him the chairman of the constitution reform commission.

Shabbir, a senior program officer at Yunus Centre since 2018, is now serving as the APS to the chief adviser.

Earlier, former Shibir president Mirza Galib, an assistant professor at Howard University, Shadik Kayem, and SM Farhad shared in detail about their roles in newspapers and TV in the last six months. However, no mainstream media has published news about them.

Galib said they prepared the nine-point charter, adding demands that would be hard for the government to agree to, as they had learned that the Awami League would agree to the students’ demand for abolishing the quota system.

Kayem revealed in an op-ed published by the pro-Jamaat Amar Desh newspaper how his radical Islamist party coordinated the movement and deployed cadres at 10 points of the capital city to force the government to resign from August 3—two days after the government banned Jamaat-Shibir, blaming it for widespread arson attacks and murder of police and ruling party members.

The Shibir leader never used his political identity during the movement; rather, he wore the signature headband of the Bangladesh flag and chanted the popular slogans of the 1971 Liberation War. The mainstream media also didn’t mention it, though it’s a fundamental principle of journalism.

After the OHCHR released its full report last week, Kayem said in a Facebook post that his team was closely working with the fact-finding mission on the ground.

Sarjis Alam, key coordinator of the student platform who is now a top leader of the Nagorik Party, said that Chhatra Shibir supported the July-August uprising both directly and indirectly by being present on the streets and playing the role of allies in crucial steps.

Another student coordinator, Abdul Kader, opened up about Shibir’s role in the movement and how it turned into an anti-government movement through the announcement of the nine-point demand. A news report on his Facebook post can be accessed here.

On the other hand, the media wing chief of banned extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), Imtiaz Selim, told the BBC Bangla that they had kept their identities secret during the movement. After Sheikh Hasina’s fall, HT jihadists carried out victory processions in Dhaka and some other districts using students with the kalema flags and demanded that the interim government withdraw the ban.

Army-Yunus clique, the second time

From 2005 till January 1, 2007, the same civil society leaders linked to the US embassy were highlighting the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) as a corrupt political entity that patronizes pro-Pakistani jihadist elements, even though the Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat Islam’s mother organization, Islami Oikyo Jote—a pro-Taliban Qawmi madrasa platform—were also part of that coalition government.

The mainstream media echoed the narrative supplied by the military, the US and its Western community that the government was conducting political reforms to clean up the mess.

Grameen Bank’s then managing director and son of the Pakistan Muslim League leader Dula Mia Saudagar, Prof Muhammad Yunus, who was conferred the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 as a political award by the US, was all in all behind the 1/11 government as he lacked confidence to take the office of the Chief Adviser.

After 17 years, the same actors are in power and are talking about extensive reforms to weaken the BNP, eliminate the Awami League, and rehabilitate Jamaat and its extremist elements.

The army was the de facto ruler in 2007 since they declared an emergency before cracking down on politicians, but this time, to avoid criticism, they didn’t do the same mistake. Instead, they gave themselves magistracy powers in September 2024.

The inaction of the army during curfews in July 2024 and the March to Dhaka program on August 5 exposes its intentions. Moreover, the massive anarchy, mass killings of police and Awami League members, occupation of property, and the systematic persecution of the minorities after the fall of the Awami League government show how the army was working with Jamaat and jihadists to establish a pro-US and pro-Pakistani government.

The army’s assistance is also exposed as the leaders of the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, the notorious Islami Chhatra Shibir, have started to take credit for designing and organizing the student-led uprising in July under the guise of an anti-quota movement. Jamaat-Shibir never considers camouflage as unethical, rather justifying the tactics as a tool during jihad.

The release of al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants and the army’s inaction during mob violence by the militants disguised as Touhidi Janata expose the government’s mindset.

The allegations against the army put forward by former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and the activities by the pro-US and pro-jihadist former army officers before the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government also reveal the camouflaged army coup on August 5.

How Hillary exerted pressure on Bangladesh

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, then the secretary of state, to “find a way to clear her [Sheikh Hasina] mind of all the terrifying thoughts” she had about him and become a peacemaker.

Hillary abused her power to engage the Dhaka embassy officials, former diplomats, US businessmen and world leaders to rally for Yunus, terming the allegations and legal proceedings against Yunus false and motivated.

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, the 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 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.