Baku, Azerbaijan, May 14
Trend:
Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR expressed a serious discontent with an article published by The Washington Post with regard to a conference held in May 2013 in Baku.
"We strongly dispute the characterization that SOCAR secretly played a role in the May 2013 conference in Baku," said the company May 14. "At no time did SOCAR hide from the attendees of the conference our involvement - as the story notes, SOCAR's logo and name was presented prominently in Baku at the conference."
"SOCAR has never been under investigation in this matter because the responsibility for disclosing SOCAR's financial support for the conference fell to those who were the trip's public sponsors," the company added. "We have cooperated fully with this investigation. We are therefore disappointed that the compliance procedures were not followed correctly by the trip's sponsors and we are unclear why these disclosures were omitted. SOCAR will happily work to address this situation, and looks forward to sponsoring future events to introduce lawmakers to the issues concerning this critical region."