Dismissed.” A single word on April 4 from Bangladesh’s highest court ended a bitter legal battle that has grabbed world attention. The loser in this case: Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of Grameen Bank, the groundbreaking Bangladeshi microfinance institution(MFI) he is no longer allowed to run. Upholding a previous ruling that Yunus, 70, illegally remained managing director of the MFI past the age limit of 60, the court sided with the government of Sheikh Hasina Wazed and the central bank. But as with many of the highs and lows of microfinance –the industry that provides small loans and other financial services to the world’s poor there is much more than meets the eye to this boardroom shakeout. At a minimum, the recent Grameen saga is what Mary Ellen Iskenderian, president and CEO of non-profit Women’s World Banking (WWB) in New York, calls “flash points” — events over the past year that have shaken the collective confidence of the fast-growing, $60 billion (in assets) global microfinance industry. Once hailed for their promise of alleviating poverty by providing capital to the millions of “unbanked” poor around the world, MFIs from Morocco to Mexico have been accused of exploitation and profiting from aggressive sales tactics and the usurious double- or even triple-digit interest rates they charge customers. Next door in Bangladesh, tension between Yunus and the Bangladeshi government had been on the rise. That already tenuous relationship took a turn for the worse following the November airing of a documentary film that challenged the merits of microfinance and cited, among other things, the misuse of aid the Norwegian government gave to Grameen in the 1990s. Though officials in Norway quickly issued a statement saying that the aid case had been settled amicably long ago, the ball was rolling. Sheikh Hasina — stoking a longstanding personal feud with Yunus — weighed in. Using a press conference in February, she accused MFIs of “sucking blood from the poor.” Her government has since launched various investigations into activities at Grameen Bank.