UNITED NATIONS, 12 October 2003 — If you think that diplomatic immunity is a license to steal, cheat and misbehave, consider the career of Robert C. Moller, a former New York City Police Department detective who is responsible for handling the worst crimes and indiscretions of diplomats at the United Nations.
In the 23 years he has served as the US government’s chief liaison with the UN diplomatic community, Moller has sought to quietly force the recall of a former Mexican ambassador who drew his gun on a New York motorist during a parking dispute, and he negotiated the surrender of a North Korean diplomat who hid at the country’s UN mission for more than 10 months to avoid arrest on a sexual assault charge. Moller also helped squeeze millions of dollars in payment for parking fines, rent and other unpaid debt out of foreign governments, including $86,000 in overdue utility bills that Uganda and Cameroon paid to Con Edison last year.
Moller, 66, the US representative to the UN host country committee, concedes that some diplomats have got away with serious crimes, including the 1980 case of a Ghanaian diplomat’s son, Manuel Ayree, who invoked diplomatic immunity to escape prosecution on serial rape charges.
But he said the perception that foreign diplomats can skirt US laws without consequences is wrong. “Our statistics show that the diplomats are probably victims of crime 30 times compared to the one time they commit the crime,” he said.
When a diplomat does break the law, he said, “We don’t let it ride. We go to the mission and ask the ambassador to waive the immunity so a guy can face the charges. “If the ambassador refuses, the offending diplomat is expelled and receives a “life sentence” from returning, Moller added.
As the head of a department of nearly a dozen employees who are charged with resolving disputes between the city, its citizens and tens of thousands of diplomats, Moller is the chief advocate for Americans who believe they have been bilked by UN diplomats, and for foreign diplomats who believe they have been abused by Americans.
Since the early 1990s, his office has helped reduce outstanding diplomatic debt from about $13 million to about $2 million. The debt is primarily owed by poor African countries.
He has been instrumental in establishing an arrangement that allows New York prosecutors to try UN employees suspected of stealing from the organization. He has also helped to expand the authority of US courts to garnish the wages of UN staffers who fail to meet alimony and child support payments.
But Moller’s office has also rankled New Yorkers, by defending foreign diplomats who ran up millions of dollars in unpaid parking tickets through the 1990s.
In one of the most wrenching cases of his career, he had to promote Zimbabwe’s 1988 effort to seek the return of an abused 9-year-old son of a Zimbabwean diplomat who had been placed in the custody of New York social workers.
The boy, Terrence Karamba, had been taken from his parents after his father was accused of beating him and hanging him from a pipe in the family’s basement. The boy was returned to his mother under the supervision of local social workers in Zimbabwe after the US Supreme Court ruled that the United States had no jurisdiction over the case. “It was becoming an international crisis,” Moller said. “I never found out really what ever happened.”
Moller had greater success in compelling a North Korean diplomat to face a New York judge on charges of sexual misconduct. The diplomat, O Nam Chal, was released by police after he allegedly tried to rape a jogger in a park in Eastchester, NY. The official was a member of an observer mission — not a full-fledged diplomatic mission — and therefore had immunity only for “official acts.” But by the time the police returned to arrest him, he had taken refuge in the North Korean observer mission.
Since US officials were barred from holding direct talks with North Koreans, Moller opened more than 10 months of negotiations with the head of the North Korean mission through the mediation of a UN legal officer.
The North Korean diplomat eventually pleaded guilty to a third-degree sexual abuse charge and was forced to leave the country.
At times, Moller’s job has placed him at odds with local, state and federal authorities. The US mission to the United Nations’ host country affairs section, which was established in 1976 and is run by Moller, is obliged under the terms of the 1947 UN headquarters agreement to ensure that foreign diplomats can do their job without harassment. That can involve representing nations hostile to the United States in disputes with local landlords, police and city officials. “Sometimes, we were at odds with our own government in Washington,” he said.
In one case, Moller’s office sided with Libya in a dispute with the city over the taxation of several unoccupied floors of its mission.
“We were looked on as the advocates of the enemies,” he said. “But we were defending the principle of the rule of law. If you want to deal with multinational institutions, there are rules and regulations you’ve got to live by.”
