“All NGOs are freely functioning in Azerbaijan,” said Press-Secretary of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Azer Gasimov in response to the BBC's question.

Azer Gasimov said: “The National NGO forum is actively cooperating both at the local and international levels. As you know, the main role of NGOs is to consolidate the activity of the civil society and contribute to the struggle against corruption. Unfortunately, some non-governmental organizations in Azerbaijan are constantly violating the law. Most of the time individuals who established NGOs aim at getting individual profit and do other illegal actions that may be assessed as destructive activities in the civil society. There were many gaps in the legislation regulating the activities of non-governmental organizations. This, on its turn, created favorable grounds for some NGOs to commit aforementioned law violations. Taking this into account, related amendments were made to the legislation on NGOs' activities. The main goal of those changes was to ensure full transparency in the activities of NGOs. I want to mention that there the work carried out in this regard has nothing to do with political processes. Ensuring transparence of NGOs is in full compliance with the idea of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).”