HC drops Tk1,100cr tax evasion cases against Dr Yunus from cause list

The High Court on Tuesday dropped three cases from the cause list filed against Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus on charges of evading approximately Tk1,100 crore.

During a hearing on the matter, the High Court bench of Justice Farah Mahbub and Justice Muhammad Mahbub Ul Islam stated that the Attorney General had requested a speedy hearing of the three cases. However, the court cannot conduct any hearing before 7 June.

At that time, Attorney General AM Amin Uddin argued that the cases should be heard and concluded before June, as the revenue in question needs to be accounted for in the upcoming budget. However, Dr Yunus' lawyers expressed their unpreparedness for the hearing.

The Attorney General informed the court that if a hearing date for the case is not assigned this month, he will appeal to the Chief Justice. However, the court deemed that a speedy hearing could not be arranged and subsequently removed the case from the agenda.

Subsequently, the Attorney General informed the media that he plans to submit an application to another bench of the High Court for an expedited hearing of the case.

The government informed the High Court on Sunday that between 2012 and 2017, Dr Yunus evaded taxes from Grameen Kalyan and Grameen Telecom Trust totalling Tk1,100 crore.

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) issued a notice to collect the revenue from him. However, the Nobel laureate filed two writs in 2017 and one writ in 2020 seeking the suspension of the NBR notice. 

The High Court temporarily suspended the NBR notice proceedings in light of these writs and issued a rule to determine whether the notice should be cancelled. 

Later that day, the Attorney General requested a final settlement of the rule.