Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, credited with pioneering microfinance banking that helped lift millions out of poverty, was convicted on Monday of violating the country's labour laws.
His supporters deemed the conviction politically motivated due to enmity with longtime Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Hasina, who is the daughter of Bangladesh's slain founder Sheikh Mujeebur Rehman, has accused Yunus of "sucking blood" from the poor and sees him as a political rival.
Yunus and three of his colleagues from Grameen Telecom, one of the firms he founded, were accused of violating Bangladesh's labour laws, with the court determining that they failed to create a workers' welfare fund in the company. Yunus and his colleagues deny the charges.
A labour court in Dhaka subsequently convicted Yunus and his colleagues to spend "six months' in simple imprisonment". However, the court immediately granted bail to all four, pending appeals.
The Grameen Bank founder faces another 100 charges, which supporters say have been trumped up, for labour law violations and graft.
Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his Grameen Bank, which pioneered microfinance banking for the poor.
But his long-running spat with Hasina has caught up to him. Critics accuse Bangladeshi courts of rubber-stamping decisions made by Hasina's government, which is all but certain to win another term in power next week at elections boycotted by the opposition.