Hillary as Secretary of State Pressured Bangladesh PM to Help Foundation Donor

Hillary as Secretary of State Pressured Bangladesh PM to Help Foundation Donor

In 2016, The Daily Caller reported how the Department of State under Hillary Clinton provided $13 million to Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh even though he faced corruption charges after his ousting in 2011 as managing director of Grameen bank.

It turns out Yunus also donated between $100,000 to $300,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which regularly “showcased him as a celebrity figure” at foundation functions.

Well, on Thursday, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s office spoke with Circa to confirm “Mrs. Clinton called her office in March 2011 to demand that Dr. Muhammed Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace prize winner, be restored to his role as chairman of the country’s most famous microcredit bank, Grameen Bank.”

Circa reported:

“Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in March 2011 insisting her not to remove Dr. Muhammad Yunus from the post of Managing Director of Grameen Bank,” Deputy Press Secretary Md Nazrul Islam told Circa in an email.

Islam said the prime minister informed Mrs. Clinton that according to Grameen Bank rules and regulations, nobody can hold the position of the Managing Director of Grameen Bank after the age of 60. He was 70 at the time of his removal and had wrangled for months to no avail with the prime minister over his removal.

The government told Clinton that “Dr. Yunus drew salaries and allowances illegally for 10 years.” Since the bank belongs to the “statutory body of the government,” the bank “is subject to the banking laws.”

Richard Painter, the former Chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush and supported Hillary in 2016, believes this information “may trigger new calls for a criminal investigation into the foundation activities.” However, he does not think “anything would come of it.” He continued to Circa:

“People in public life shouldn’t be raising money from anybody, anywhere, or for anything,” Painter said. “But until we fix the campaign finance system this is the way it’s going to be.”

Painter, who supported Clinton during her campaign for president, said that there is little if any evidence that she crossed any legal lines regarding the Clinton Foundation. He said favoritism to somebody giving money to campaign is often and frequent in Washington D.C. politics and “if that were the case we’d be investigating the entire U.S. Congress.”

“This shows the Clinton’s insensitivity to the public’s anger and lack of judgement when they expanded the fundraising beyond politics,” said Painter, who said people in public office should not be raising money.

The Connections

During the investigation of Hillary’s email scandal, evidence showed that the Clinton family “closely monitored the Bangladesh government’s investigation of Yunus, who is a high-profile fixture at most of the Clinton Foundation’s major gatherings.” The Daily Caller continued:

A June 11, 2012 email from Amitabh Desai, the foundation’s foreign policy director, for example, alerted Hillary Clinton of a Yunus response to the Bangladesh investigation.

“In case you haven’t seen it already, WJC wanted HRC and you to see this,” Desai said in the email routed through Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, and Huma Abedin, her deputy chief of staff. “WJC” is Bill Clinton and “HRC” is Hillary Clinton.

Last month, The Daily Caller reported that State Department aides threatened the prime minister’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy “with an IRS audit in an attempt to stop” the investigation of Yunus:

“They threatened me with the possibility of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service,” he said. “I have been here legally for 17 years and never had a problem. But they said, ‘well, you know, you might get audited.’”

“They would say over and over again, ‘Yunus has powerful friends’ and we all knew they were talking of Secretary Clinton. Everybody knew it was Mrs. Clinton,” Wazed told TheDCNF.

The Prime Minister originally disclosed in general terms the pressure exerted on her son at a February reception in Munich.

“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy had to face pressure from the US State Department to keep Muhammad Yunus as the Grameen Bank managing director,” the Dhaka Tribune reported.

Long History Between Yunus and Hillary

For a long time, Yunus reached out to Hillary to use her post as a way “to pressure the Bangladesh government.” From Circa:

In 2009, Dr. Yunus sent a personal email to then Secretary of State Clinton’s office asking for intervention into the Bangladesh bank and stated his concerns, according to a declassified WikiLeaks cable.

Those declassified cables show the U.S. ambassador also raised the issue with government officials prior to Mrs. Clinton’s call and that Mrs. Clinton asked State officials to alert her husband to the problems Yunus was having with Bangladesh.

“Please see if the issues of Grameen Bank can be raised in a friendly way,” the email from Yunus to then Clinton advisor Melanne Verveer stated. “I sought an appointment with the Prime Minister to brief her on our problems, at the advice of the U.S. Ambassador in Dhaka.”

Yunus received the Medal of Freedom in 2009, from President Obama, for his work in aiding the 150 million poor families receive financing and business loans through his microfinance program at the bank.

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