London, June 29, IRNA – Diplomatic missions and international organizations owe more than £36 million ($54m) in fees and outstanding fines for the congestion charges in London, Foreign Secretary William Hague has revealed.
The worst offender was the US Embassy with 35,602 fines totalling over £3.8 million up until January 29 this year, followed by the Russian Embassy owing £3.2 million from nearly 22,000 fines.
The Japanese Embassy has nearly £2.8 million outstanding in unpaid congestion charge fines, the German Embassy more than £2.6m, the Nigerian Embassy almost £2m and both the Sudanese and Indian Embassies owing more than £1.2 million.
The overwhelming majority of the 128 embassies in the British capital originally accepted to pay the congestion charge for the use of road in central London, when it was introduced in 2003, but many have since followed the US refusal to pay.
The US has claimed that the charge is a direct taxation on embassies, which it is diplomatically immune from paying based on the 1960 Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.
In other parliamentary statements published Tuesday, Hague also disclosed that foreign embassies also owed over £500,000 in unpaid parking and other minor traffic violation fines and nearly £600,000 in outstanding local non-domestic rates.
Embassies were also shown to have claimed diplomatic immunity from prosecution for 78 serious charges against diplomats and their dependants over the past five years that would in normal cases carry a sentence of at least 12 months in prison.
Between 2005 and 2009 police made eight requests to the government for immunity to be waived, but all of them were declined. In four cases the embassy involved subsequently informed the Foreign Office that the accused individual had been withdrawn.