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Embassy Construction Issues
Construction of embassy, consular, and associated cultural buildings follows rules that involve not just building codes, contracts and zoning but extend into good neighborly relations, reciprocity, immunities and treaty law. Clearly, these matters involve challenges, even in seemingly simple situations such as selling an embassy property.
A situation beyond the merely challenging results from the construction of the American embassy facility in Poland. According to a Daily News/City News report U.S. Sued for Pole-Axing Old Home of September, 27, 2006, the State Department conspired with the Polish government in 1956 to deprive Jan Czetwertynski's family of its ancestral home in order to lease it to the United States for 80 years.
Czetwertynski alleges that the facts involve false allegations of espionage and now asks the United States District for the Southern District of New York for $25 million in compensation plus a tenfold amount in punitive damages.
The United States Department of State has two distinct, important offices for, and roles in, foreign construction within the United States and American construction abroad. It is hard to imagine that either of them would conspire to conquer foreign real estate for diplomatic use.
-- Clemens Kochinke, Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe, LLP, Washington.
Thu, / / Embassy Law Link
