Sleazy tales in The Hague

While the International Criminal Court (ICC) was in hot pursuit of former President Rodrigo Duterte — after being frustrated by the attempt at face-saving arrest orders on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin — European media was burning with sordid stories involving Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan.

Duterte is now detained in The Hague after the Philippine government willingly surrendered and bundled him off on a private jet to face a process which legal experts say may last between five and 10 years.

The trial of Duterte likely will proceed with Khan facing sexual misconduct allegations as a backdrop.

European publications reported that Khan had bombarded his alleged victim with calls urging her to deny the sexual assault.

British digital publication The Mail learned that Khan spent more than five months pressuring, sometimes multiple times in one day, his female colleague to retract the serious allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

In one instance, which took place just three days before The Mail, quoting court sources, revealed in October that he was facing the allegations, Khan told the alleged victim the matter could be “contained” to avoid a “feeding frenzy” in the press.

He allegedly suggested that she write a letter disavowing her accusations, which she did not do.

Instead, it was understood that later that day she left the Netherlands and since then has not returned, fearing continued pressure from both the prosecutor and internally at the court in The Hague.

More recently, The Mail cited a well-placed source as saying, “She couldn’t take it anymore. She was so distressed and left in such a hurry that her car is still parked at the airport nearly five months later.”

The female official has not seen her immediate family since that day in October.

Khan, 54, announced he was seeking the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant in May 2024, just two weeks after learning that the female lawyer at the ICC had accused him of serious sexual misconduct.

An external investigation sought to examine the allegations that Khan had groped the woman in his office and “sexually touched” her while on a work trip, which he has strenuously denied.

Khan was advised in May to avoid one-to-one contact with his alleged victim.

An ICC insider was quoted as saying, “It was pretty relentless, I think [Mr. Khan] wanted to brush it away.”

One of Khan’s most senior advisers and closest allies, Mamadou Racine Ly, senior coordinator, immediate office of the Prosecutor, also made repeated attempts to persuade the alleged victim to email investigators and say that she had no complaint to make.

Both officials are said to have done this during in-person meetings and over numerous phone calls, initially taking place two or three times a week before ramping up to nearly every day from July and then often multiple times a day from August until mid-October last year.

Ly is said to have quizzed the female staff member over what her “responsive lines” should be if the press caught wind of the allegations, which he has denied.

Last month, Khan was barred from entering the United States by Donald Trump as part of an executive order sanctioning court officials. TDT

Doors opened for wolves

Budget experts are questioning the claim of Finance Secretary Ralph Recto that privatization opens doors for ordinary Filipinos.

Who exactly are these “ordinary” investors? A budget analyst said the average Filipino, scraping by on modest wages, isn’t about to bid on an antiquated government property or a stake in a failing government-owned or controlled corporation (GOCC).

These sales historically favor the well-connected — cronies, oligarchs, and corporate giants with deep pockets and deeper ties to the administration. The Privatization Council (PrC) and its Privatization Management Office, cloaked in bureaucratic legitimacy via Executive Order 323, have lined up a fire sale to the usual suspects.

The promise of “nation building” rings empty when the profits are privatized, but the losses, decades of public investment in these assets, were socialized.

With a national budget swelling to gargantuan proportions, expanding the shortfall along with it, the Department of Finance’s focus on non-tax revenues is an admission that traditional revenue streams, taxes, customs duties are either tapped out or too politically toxic to squeeze harder.

A budget analyst said that instead of fixing a broken tax system riddled with loopholes for the wealthy, the DoF would rather flog off public assets and call it progress.

A government addicted to spending beyond its means is now raiding the family silver to avoid accountability.

The resurrection of pork barrel-style spending, thinly veiled as unprogrammed allocations, isn’t an accident, it’s a feature. Privatization is the grease keeping the wheels turning, a way to funnel cash into a system that thrives on opacity and rewards loyalty over merit.