Who is Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh protesters' chosen chief adviser?

DHAKA — Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, the pioneer of the global microcredit movement who could shepherd Bangladesh's new interim government, was an arch foe of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who has resigned and fled the country.

Known as the "banker to the poor", Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for helping lift millions from poverty by providing tiny loans of sums less than US$100 (S$132) to the rural poor who are too impoverished to gain attention from traditional banks.

Their lending model has since inspired similar projects around the world, including developed countries like the United States where Yunus started a separate non-profit Grameen America.

As his success grew, Yunus, now 84, flirted briefly with a political career, attempting to form his own party in 2007. But his ambitions were widely viewed as having sparked the ire of Hasina, who accused him of "sucking blood from the poor".

Critics in Bangladesh and other countries, including neighbouring India, have also said microlenders charge excessive rates and make money out of the poor. But Yunus said the rates were far lower than local interest rates in developing countries or the 300 per cent or more that loan sharks sometimes demand.

In 2011, Hasina's government removed him as head of Grameen Bank, saying that at 73, he had stayed on past the legal retirement age of 60. Thousands of Bangladeshis formed a human chain to protest his sacking.

In January this year, Yunus was sentenced to six months in prison for violations of labour law. He and 13 others were also indicted by a Bangladesh court in June on charges of embezzlement of 252.2 million taka (S$2.83 million) from the workers' welfare fund of a telecoms company he