Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus appeared in court in Bangladesh Thursday to deny all charges in a labour dispute case his lawyers said is a government campaign to "harass" him.
Yunus, 83, is credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his pioneering micro-credit bank but he has fallen out with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has accused him of "sucking blood" from the poor.
He appeared in the dock in the crowded court in the capital Dhaka, denying all charges in a case in which he faces up to six months in jail if found guilty.
Sheikh Hasina, who is readying for general elections due by the end of January, has launched scathing attacks against the internationally respected 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Yunus is facing around 175 separate criminal and labour tribunal cases related to social business firms he set up in Bangladesh aimed at creating jobs and bringing services to the poor.
Yunus and three officials of Grameen Telecom, one of the firms he founded, are accused of violating the country's labour laws when they failed to create a workers' welfare fund in the company. All four deny the charges.
"Yunus and the other three defendants have said they are innocent," lawyer Khaja Tanvir Ahmed told AFP.
"The government's sole aim in this case against Professor Yunus is to harass and humiliate him in front of the world," he said.
Yunus told reporters after the hearing that he had not profited from any of the more than 50 social business firms he had set up in Bangladesh.
"They were not for my personal benefit, whether it is Grameen Bank or many other organisations," Yunus said, referring to the micro-lender he set up in the early 1980s.
In August, 160 global figures, including former US president Barack Obama and ex-UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, published a joint letter against the "continuous judicial harassment" of the micro-credit pioneer.
The signatories -- including more than 100 of his fellow Nobel laureates -- said they feared for "his safety and freedom".
Critics accuse Bangladeshi courts of rubber-stamping decisions made by the current government.
