HC bench refuses to hear tax evasion cases against Dr Yunus
A High Court bench has refused to hear the 12 cases filed against Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus on charges of evading approximately Tk1,100 crore.
The HC bench of Justice Md Iqbal Kabir and Justice SM Moniruzzaman on Monday dropped it from the hearing list saying that one of them had earlier represented the state during the hearing of cases against Dr Yunus.
Justice SM Moniruzzaman, then deputy attorney general, was the state representative in the hearing of the cases.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
Later, the documents were sent to the chief justice.
The government informed the High Court on 7 May 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.
On 9 May, 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.
