Lawyer Geertjan van Oosten has asked the Amsterdam bar association to initiate disciplinary proceedings against presenter, ex-lawyer and former office colleague Khalid Kasem. Kasem is accused of bribing an official.
Photo: Khalid Kasem (left) has been co-host of the talk show Khalid & Sophie since 2021. Pending the investigation, he has resigned from his work for BNNVara. It is unclear whether Kasem will return to the broadcaster. (Robin Utrecht / Hollandse Hoogte / ANP)
The Algemeen Dagblad published January 5 about tapes in which Kasem allegedly admitted to the late crime journalist Peter R. de Vries that he had bribed an official of the Judicial Institutions Agency (DJI). In the recordings he would also state that this was rife at his old office, Van Oosten’s.
Van Oosten immediately denied this completely last weekend: “That is really complete nonsense.” The claim, which implies that bribes are more common in the legal profession, also cast doubt on the chairman of the Dutch Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Dennis Wolters.
Stained and damaged
In the recordings from 2019, it can be heard, among other things, that Kasem admitted to De Vries – then director of the law firm De Vries & Kasem – that he tried to get his client released with bribery (worth eight thousand euros). In his defense, Kasem then argued that this happened much more often at Van Oosten’s office, where he worked until 2012.
“These kinds of practices, not to justify it… At Van Oosten we didn’t do anything other than these kinds of tricks to get these kinds of people out sooner, or to help them. It’s just been too easy,” Kasem said on the tapes the AD. After the earlier rejection of this allegation, Van Oosten has now requested that disciplinary proceedings be initiated against Kasem.
In a letter to the Amsterdam dean, the lawyer writes that Kasem has ‘smeared’ his name and those of his office colleagues, and that he has damaged ‘the reputation of the entire criminal law profession’. After the AD article, the Amsterdam order already announced that it would start an investigation into the issue surrounding Kasem. The DJI also announced that it would be conducting an investigation.
2024-01-10 10:03:14
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