Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi pioneer of “microfinance” loans to help the poor, made a final legal appeal to the Supreme Court yesterday against an order dismissing him from his own bank.

The Nobel laureate also asked the court to immediately suspend the central bank’s order removing him from Grameen Bank, which he founded in 1983 and which provides collateral-free loans to eight million rural borrowers.

Yunus, 70, celebrated worldwide for tackling poverty through microfinance cash loans, has fallen out with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and his supporters say he has been targeted in a bitter smear campaign.

He was fired as Grameen Bank managing director last week by the central bank and on Tuesday lost a High Court appeal against his dismissal.

Backed by a high-profile international lobby group, he defied the order by returning to work at Grameen Bank’s headquarters and launching his legal battle.

“A hearing has been set for the morning of March 15 and the full bench of the Supreme Court’s appellate division, led by the country’s Chief Justice, will hear the case,” Tanim Hussain Shawon, one of Yunus’s lawyers, told AFP.

During a preliminary hearing Wednesday, the Supreme Court refused to suspend the High Court verdict, which upheld the central bank order sacking Yunus from his position.

The central bank, which is nominally independent from the government, removed Yunus on the grounds that he had been in his position illegally, as he failed to seek its approval when he was reappointed indefinitely in 1999.

High Court judge Muhammad Mamtaj Uddin Ahmed said in his ruling Tuesday it was “crystal clear” that the central bank’s order was legal, and added that Yunus had also exceeded Grameen Bank’s mandatory retirement age of 60.

“Following the High Court verdict, Yunus is no longer the managing director of Grameen Bank,” Muzammel Huq, Grameen Bank’s government-appointed chairman, told AFP.

“Next week, the board will meet and we will set up a five-member search committee to find a new managing director for the bank,” said Huq, who is openly hostile to Yunus.