MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) - British Ambassador Tony Brenton said at a Moscow news conference Monday that an agreement on the status of the British Council would help resolve the long-standing dispute over whether the council is bound by law to pay taxes to the Russian government.
The dispute escalated in June last year, after the British Council missed an Interior Ministry deadline to submit its financial records for an audit. The ministry's economic crime department claimed the organization was liable for taxation on the income yielded by its commercial language courses.
The Foreign Ministry agreed that the British Council should pay taxes because the 1994 Russian-British cooperation agreement regulating its activities in Russia did not grant diplomatic status to any of its fifteen offices across the country. The council insisted, however, that, as a cultural department of the British Embassy, it should enjoy diplomatic status.
