US news portal says Yunus Center rejoinder to its news is baseless

The Washington-based news portal, which carried a report on the link between former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Muhammad Yunus’ receiving huge funds, has described the Yunus Center rejoinder as ‘baseless’.

In an email to bdnews24.com on Thursday, Daily Caller News Foundation said the Center’s assertions were baseless, “but their omissions and silence on many issues also should be of concern”.

The portal in a report on Apr 17 said Hillary used her influence in the Department of State to award ‘disgraced’ Muhammad Yunus at least $13 million in grants, contracts and loans, despite his ouster from Grameen Bank in 2011.

Yunus Center in the rejoinder said the portal report, which was picked up by the Bangladesh media, created a “great deal of misunderstanding among readers”.

Daily Caller News Foundation said neither the Grameen Foundation USA nor the Clinton Foundation responded to its request for comment prior to the publication of the report.

“Yunus also did not respond to our request for an interview,” it said in the email.

The portal refuted Yunus Center’s assertion that “whatever USAID gave, it was mostly in contracts, and investments, only a small portion as grant.”

Citing reports on a US government website, USAspending.gov, it said 12 of the 18 transactions to Grameen Foundation USA were grants and only three were loans.

The Center in the rejoinder had claimed that “the report totally falsely says that the Department of State has awarded at least $13 million to Professor Yunus in grants, contracts, and loans. State department has no authority to do such thing”.

The portal said, “Our story said the funds were awarded by the US Agency for International Development, which is an extension of the US Department of State.”

It said the Clinton Foundation lavished praise on Yunus throughout its website. “We counted at least 37 separate pages in which Secretary Clinton and the Foundation hail Mr. Yunus personally, as well as the work of the Grameen Foundation, USA and Grameen America.” 

Daily Caller News Foundation said the Center was silent about the Bangladesh government-constituted commission's 136-page findings in 2013 regarding Yunus’ role in Grameen Bank.

According to it, the commission found that over three decades Yunus had run Grameen Bank in an autocratic manner, with a rubber-stamp board and without an audit committee.

It said the Center was silent about the warmth the 2006 Nobel Peace laureate exhibited towards the military generals who ruled Bangladesh for two years.

The Center said nothing about the fact that President Bill Clinton personally and aggressively lobbied the Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize to Yunus, it added.

The portal said the Yunus Center was also silent about the vast business empire built by Yunus, mixing both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises.  “Many of these ventures appear to have no serious financial oversight.”

The Center did not address the extraordinary intervention by Secretary Clinton into Bangladesh’s affairs when she criticised the government’s probe into the management of Grameen Bank, it added.

The portal said the relationships such as the one existing between the Clintons and Yunus were the focus of an unprecedented and ongoing investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.