Diplomats freewheeling around London

LONDON - They live in opulent embassies and enjoy chauffeur-driven cars, but when it comes to paying parking fines or footing the bill for rubbish collection, foreign emissaries are refusing to pay their way in London on a grand scale.

Embassies have used diplomatic immunity to run up over 3.5 million (US$8.8 million) in unpaid fines, including thousands of outstanding parking tickets.

Diplomats, including those representing the world's richest countries - among them Saudi Arabia - owe almost 1 million in unpaid domestic rates and are refusing to pick up their share of the bill for local services such as street cleaning.

The scale of unpaid fines has infuriated the Foreign Office, which has demanding payment from embassies.

Diplomats have also clocked up millions of pounds in unpaid London congestion charge fines since the introduction of the environmental levy almost two years ago.

The worst non-payers include the United Arab Emirates, whose diplomatic staff have almost 5000 outstanding penalties adding up to 452,650.

Last year, almost 5000 parking and speeding tickets were not paid by diplomatic staff.

Unlike most drivers who would face a visit from the bailiffs if they refused to pay their fines, diplomats are immune from prosecution.

"We informed missions that failure to pay fines could result in them being in a list presented to Parliament," Foreign Office said.

"We wrote to missions owing more than 1000 to settle their debts."

Diplomats used their status to run up about 400,000 in unpaid parking tickets and other "traffic-violation fines", Foreign Office figures show. Some missions have made arrangements to clear debts and, after prompting by the Foreign Office, foreign diplomats settled 63,650 in unpaid traffic fines last year.

Unpaid congestion fines
* UAE £452,650
* Angola £392,750
* Sudan £274,870
* Nigeria £140,620
* Tanzania £136,280
* Sierra Leone £135,290
* South Africa £122,590
* Zimbabwe £96,390
* Kenya £96,010
* US £62,250
TOTAL: £1,909,700

Unpaid traffic fines
* Kazakhstan £23,870
* Egypt £22,200
* Saudi Arabia £21,980
* Georgia £14,560
* China £13,350
* Turkey £13,230
* Germany £12,280
* Russia £11,410
* Libya £9850
* Nigeria £8750
TOTAL: £151,480

- INDEPENDENT