Bangladesh is burning—its industries collapsing, entrepreneurs suffocating, unemployment rising to historic highs, and the entire economy wobbling on a knife’s edge. Amid this national emergency, the man at the helm of the so-called interim salvation government, Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, has been busy doing something far removed from emergency economic reform or national rescue. He has, instead, converted his brief stewardship of the state into a de facto corporate expansion of the Grameen empire.

Make no mistake: Yunus is not merely the “chief adviser.” In effect, he is the unelected Prime Minister of Bangladesh. And he has shown a disturbing proclivity to rule not for the country but for his own legacy, personal circle, and institutional network. The privileges he has extended to Grameen entities since assuming office on August 8, 2024, are neither coincidental nor incidental. They form a pattern—one of self-serving governance cloaked in the rhetoric of reform.

While thousands of factories shut down, Yunus greenlit a private university — Grameen University. While business owners can't afford to pay salaries, he ensured Grameen Employment got a lucrative manpower export license. While young people fail to find jobs, Grameen Telecom was approved for a digital wallet service. And while private banks are collapsing under 16%+ interest rates and capital flight, the government under Yunus gifted Grameen Bank a five-year tax exemption and reduced its public ownership to just 10%.

These are not acts of national revival. These are acts of empire-building.

Conflict of Interest as State Policy

Since coming to power, Yunus has offered a masterclass in how to legalize conflict of interest. A supposedly neutral interim head, whose task is to stabilize the country before an election, has instead systematically prioritized personal and institutional gain. Legal cases that once hung over his head—money laundering, labor violations—disappeared within days of his appointment. Regulatory approvals for Grameen-linked entities, many of which had been delayed for years, were suddenly fast-tracked.

For a man globally feted for his “integrity,” the irony is unbearable.

Yunus’s defenders point out that he has no shareholding in the Grameen companies anymore. But this is sophistry. Even if he does not own them formally, his name, persona, and authority are deeply intertwined with their existence. The entities—Grameen Telecom, Grameen Employment, Grameen University, Grameen Bank—are not faceless institutions. They are extensions of the "Yunus brand" that has been cultivated for decades. Every favor they receive, every exemption they’re granted, directly enhances Yunus’s institutional legacy and influence.

The “perception” of wrongdoing is not just perception—it is political reality.

An Economy in Ruins, and a Leader in Denial

It would be one thing if the chief adviser were also overseeing a competent, focused economic rescue plan. But the opposite is true.

Entrepreneurs are calling 2025 the “death year for industry.” According to the Bangladesh Textile Mills Association (BTMA), over 60% of factories are no longer operational. The gas crisis has decimated production. Electricity outages stretch seven hours per day. Bank interest rates have crossed 16%. Credit growth is at its lowest point in 21 years. And 330,000 jobs have been lost in just the past year—the highest in the country’s recorded history.

The private sector is in cardiac arrest. But Yunus is busy drafting ordinances that increase the shareholder power of Grameen Bank and writing off tax liabilities. How can a man so indifferent to the country’s immediate economic pain be expected to steer it toward a democratic transition?

Instead of crisis management, we are seeing crisis exploitation.

Dismissing Cases Without Trials: A Judicial Scandal

Perhaps the most grotesque symbol of this self-serving rule is the blanket dismissal of criminal cases against Yunus and his associates. In a functioning democracy, criminal charges—especially ones involving money laundering and labor law violations—are supposed to be resolved in open court through transparent trial procedures. But in Yunus's Bangladesh, these cases vanished like morning mist.

Three days after Yunus took power, a Dhaka court acquitted him in a long-standing money laundering case. Another labor law case, in which he had already been convicted and sentenced to six months in jail, was nullified just before he assumed office. No review, no hearing, no process.

This is not justice. This is judicial opportunism dressed in the garb of technicality. It reeks of authoritarian arrogance—precisely the kind Yunus once accused his rivals of practicing.

The Specter of the "Minus Two" Formula

The public has not forgotten 2007–08, when Yunus, in the shadows of the military-backed caretaker government, floated the now infamous “Minus Two” formula—an audacious attempt to remove both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia from politics altogether. Backed by civil society elites and foreign patrons, Yunus even flirted with launching his own political party, Nagarik Shakti. When that failed, he returned to his comfort zone—international seminars, philanthropic optics, and personal brand polishing.

But now, in 2025, the script has changed. Yunus is back at the center of power, not as a passive moral figure, but as an unelected ruler who is governing with a vengeance. The ghost of the "Minus Two" formula is walking again—except this time, Yunus has only himself in the equation.

And the country is paying the price.

Crony Technocracy vs. National Transition

The 2024 student uprising, which brought down the Awami League regime, was rooted in a desire for democratic renewal, accountability, and justice. Yunus was brought in to lead a nonpartisan transition. Instead, he has blurred the lines between interim governance and corporate consolidation.

Bangladesh does not need a savior-state run by one man and his loyalists. It needs an accountable, transitional government that clears the space for credible elections. Yunus has instead installed a crony technocracy, where loyalty to his institutional empire appears more important than service to the republic.

There is no bold reform agenda, no relief packages for SMEs, no real attempt to tame inflation or stabilize the taka. The power sector is collapsing. The banking system is crumbling. Revenues are falling. And Yunus is issuing regulatory favors like a monarch granting lands to barons.

The gap between promise and performance is now an abyss.

Silence of the Civil Society Lambs

Perhaps the most disappointing dimension of this entire saga is the deafening silence from Bangladesh’s once-vocal civil society. Editors who wrote scathing op-eds during the Awami League's reign are now silent. Rights activists who warned against state capture under Hasina now avert their eyes as Yunus captures the state for his own private realm.

Where are the public letters of protest now? Where are the calls for transparency? Why has principled critique gone into hiding?

This is not simply about Yunus. This is about the failure of the elite class to speak truth to power when the powerholder wears a halo.

A Dangerous Precedent for Bangladesh’s Future

Yunus's behavior sets a terrible precedent. It tells future interim leaders that neutrality is optional, that state power can be used for personal institutional gain without consequence. If Yunus can dismiss his own cases, fast-track approvals for his own companies, and rewrite banking rules for his own entities, then what moral authority will future caretaker governments possess?

The very idea of a neutral interim government—a core feature of Bangladesh’s electoral landscape—is now in jeopardy.

A Time for Accountability, Not Adulation

Bangladesh deserves better. The students who brought down an authoritarian regime did not do so for a new autocracy of benevolent branding. They wanted change. What they got is consolidation of power under the guise of reform.

Professor Muhammad Yunus may have helped lift millions out of poverty. But he is now presiding over a regime that is pushing millions into despair. His legacy as a Nobel laureate will mean little if he is remembered as the man who took a country’s moment of rebirth and turned it into a chapter of selfish ambition.

It is time for him to step back. The country cannot afford another day of this slow-motion economic disaster masquerading as governance. Let Bangladesh breathe. Let democracy return. And let the republic be governed by its citizens—not owned by one man and his foundation.