In response to the rejoinder issued by the Yunus Center in Dhaka about the Daily Caller News Foundation report produced by its Investigative Group on Muhammad Yunus and Secretary Hillary Clinton in the April 17 edition, the Foundation said it stands by its report. The statement of the Foundation sent to The Independent yesterday is as follows:
The center’s assertions are baseless, but their omissions and silence on many issues also should be of concern. Neither the Grameen Foundation, USA nor the Clinton Foundation responded to our request for comment prior to publication. Yunus also did not respond to our request for an interview. The center claims the federal funds cited were not personally for Yunus, but rather for his foundations. Our story clearly identified the recipients as the Grameen Foundation and Grameen America.  
To suggest that  Yunus has nothing to do with either of these foundations defies the record of many years. The center asserts that “whatever USAID gave, it was mostly in contracts, and investments, only a small portion as grant.”
According to USA-spending.gov, 12 of the 18 transactions to Grameen Foundation, USA were grants. Only three were loans. Here is the USAspending link: https://www.usaspending.gov/Pages/AdvancedSearch.aspx?k=grameen.  
The center asserts, “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.”
Our story said the funds were awarded by the US Agency for International Development, which is an extension of the US Department of State.  The funds provided by Grameen Foundation and Grameen Research are listed on the Clinton Foundation’s “Contributor and Grantor Information” page.
The Clinton Foundation lavishes praise on Yunus throughout its website. Significantly, their rebuttal says nothing about a wide range of other pertinent issues we raised about Yunus. Most importantly, they are silent about the Bangladesh Finance Ministry Commission’s 136-pages of findings in 2013 regarding  Yunus’ role in Grameen Bank.
The centre is silent about the warmth Yunus exhibited toward the military generals who ruled Bangladesh for two years. The centre says nothing about the fact that President Bill Clinton personally and aggressively lobbied the Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize to Prof Yunus. It is also silent about the vast business empire erected by Yunus, mixing both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises.  The centre  does not address  Yunus’ retaining the Burson Marstellar public relations firm in an effort to destroy the credibility of a Norwegian documentary producer who exposed the alleged diversion of $100 million from Grameen Bank to another private company owned by  Yunus. The centre also does not address the extraordinary intervention by Secretary Clinton into Bangladesh’s affairs when she criticized the government’s probe into the management of Grameen Bank.
Finally, it should be noted that relationships such as the one existing between the Clintons and Yunus are the focus of an unprecedented and ongoing investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
As such this is a vital issue of public importance in the US. It involves a prominent public figure whose American foundations benefited from a person in high government office.

Related News:

$13m US grants to Yunus under FBI scanner (20-04-2016)

Clarification by Yunus Centre (21-04-2016)