Exclusive: President of ICC oversight body confirms no finding of retaliation by Khan

Exclusive: President of ICC oversight body confirms no finding of retaliation by Khan

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Sondos Asem
on
Mon, 07/20/2026 - 14:01

In a letter to court member states, Paivi Kaukoranta reiterates ASP bureau has not upheld allegations of misconduct against prosecutor raised by staff in his own office

ASP President Paivi Kaukoranta at a Hague meeting in December 2025 (ICC/Flickr)

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The president of the International Criminal Court’s oversight body, the Assembly of States Parties, wrote to member states last week to confirm that no retaliation allegations made against Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan have been established by members of the executive bureau.

Paivi Kaukoranta confirmed in a letter dated 17 July that the 21-member bureau had failed to reach the required majority to confirm any finding of misconduct in relation to retaliation allegations brought by two members of Khan’s office staff during the UN-led investigation.

Kaukoranta, a Finnish diplomat, made a decision to outsource the misconduct probe into Khan to the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) in November 2024.

The chief prosecutor also faced a complaint of alleged sexual misconduct as part of that investigation, after two internal investigations into the matter were opened and closed due to the complainant’s refusal to cooperate.

The four allegations under investigation by the OIOS, according to court documents seen by MEE, comprised a complaint by a woman in Khan’s office regarding “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” and abuse of authority, as well as three allegations of retaliation against members of his office.

Khan has denied all allegations of wrongdoing. Both the complainant and Khan cooperated with the UN investigation.

For more than a year, UN investigators were tasked with gathering and weighing evidence against Khan to enable a panel of judges appointed by the bureau to provide authoritative legal advice on whether the prosecutor had committed misconduct, applying the standard of proof "beyond reasonable doubt".

On 11 December, they submitted their 150-page report and 5,000 pages of evidence to the panel. 

The OIOS report dropped one of the retaliation allegations, saying that “the evidence suggested that the actions taken were not retaliatory but were, instead, a response to concerns about [the complainant’s] work performance".

'The matter was closed'

The judges then spent nearly three months examining the OIOS probe before reaching their conclusion in March.

In a report seen by MEE, the panel concluded unanimously that the facts presented in the UN investigation "do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant framework".

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But a few weeks after the judges' report, a majority of bureau members backed a motion to disregard it, suggesting that Khan may have committed misconduct. The vote prompted concerns that the process could be politicised.

After giving Khan and the complainants a final opportunity to make further submissions, the bureau then moved to formally suspend him two months later and referred the matter to the ASP. 

Redacted copies of the UN and expert panel reports, along with other submissions to the bureau, have been distributed to all 125 member states ahead of a meeting at the UN headquarters in New York on Friday when the full ASP chamber will vote on Khan's future.

MEE reported that the bureau's confidential decision of 8 June stated that it found "the evidence establishes beyond reasonable doubt" that Khan "engaged in a sexual relationship" with the complainant, and argued that "in the context of that power imbalance a sexual relationship could never be appropriate".

But the bureau’s decision did not make a finding of misconduct related to any of the retaliation allegations. Kaukoranta’s letter on Friday corroborates MEE’s reporting on this matter.

MEE understands that following the decision, some states sought to reopen the issue and called for the ASP to consider retaliation allegations. Other states urged the bureau to provide a clear statement.

In response, the ASP president clarified that the matter is now closed.

“As you will recall, in paragraph 62 of its 8 June 2026 decision concerning the outcome of the disciplinary proceedings, the Bureau stated that it ‘could not reach a decision on the allegations of retaliation made by W06 and W10,’” she wrote, using the identifiers for two witnesses.

“This position reflected division in the Bureau, in which the legal threshold for decisions on matters of substance could not be reached,” she added, indicating that the bureau could not reach the required two-thirds majority of states present and voting.

“As the Prosecutor benefits from the presumption of innocence, the legal effect of the Bureau’s statement is that no misconduct in relation to the allegations of W06 and W10 has been established against the Prosecutor,” she wrote.

“It was upon this basis that the Bureau did not refer the matter of retaliation to the Assembly. It was also on this basis that I informed W06 and W10, on behalf of the Bureau, that the matter was closed in relation to the allegations they had made.”

Friday's vote by ASP member states comes amid continuing questions and criticism about the ASP Bureau's handling of the investigation into the allegations against Khan.

On Saturday, MEE reported comments by Josep Borrell, the former EU foreign policy chief, who accused the ASP of holding a "political vote"  to remove Khan instead of upholding judicial findings that cleared him of wrongdoing.

Borrell argued that the Khan case is "part of a larger offensive against the ICC", citing the US sanctions and threats targeting Khan and other officials following his decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders in May 2024.

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