Hacker News Reader

Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

You might find this inderesting, Cultures of Corruption: Evidence From Diplomatic Parking Tickets[1]. Apparently, there's a fairly good correlation (if I remember correctly, but the article, or at least a summary, is there to check) between cultures with a lot of corruption and unpaid parking tickets from their diplomats in NY.

1: http://www.nber.org/papers/w12312

View on HN

Interestingly Transport for London claims that the US embassy owes them ~£12 million in unpaid congestion charge fees, which exist as a disincentive to drive in central London. The embassy claim it's a form of taxation and as such they are exempt -- unsurprisingly TfL disagree. For context the next highest amounts supposedly owed are by Japan, Nigeria, Russia and India.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/us-embassy-congestion_...

Well if we successfully get a Congestion Charged passed in NYC the UK consulate here can just offset charges with the US embassy in London.

Parking fines:

http://time.com/3421587/diplomats-parking-tickets-new-york/

Parking tickets are some of the least malignant things diplomatic immunity allows diplomats and attaches to get away with. Some of the more egregious examples are things like sexual violence[1], slavery, assault, etc.

There is little the local jurisdiction can do other than ask the diplomat's home country to waive immunity --which almost never happens.

[1]https://nypost.com/2017/10/11/why-dirty-diplomats-can-litera...

Actually, they don't need to ask, they can make such a person persona non grata (which is where the term originates from [1]).

Of course this almost never happens.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_non_grata

Reply on news.ycombinator.com