Global Witness and BBC against COP29: New media attack in planning

A new wave of negative publications is set to be launched against Azerbaijan and, in particular, the country's chairmanship of COP29, in the coming days.

Report has learned from reliable sources that the main actors in this new round of anti-Azerbaijan propaganda are the international non-governmental organization Global Witness, known for its "exposé" publications targeting Azerbaijan, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

Global Witness employees acted more like intelligence agents than members of a non-governmental organization.

In early September of this year, a representative of the Chinese investment company EC Capital Holdings approached the Azerbaijani COP29 team, claiming to be interested in sponsoring COP29 and investing in the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).

In reality, this "businessman" was an employee of Global Witness, whose sole purpose was to compromise Azerbaijan's chairmanship of COP29 by linking it to the oil and gas lobby.

The investment company has a registration number and a website—everything was prepared in accordance with a pre-designed "legend." Representatives of the COP29 operating company, upon receiving the corresponding request, entered into negotiations with EC Capital and began discussing the possibilities of potential sponsorship of the event, as well as various available sponsorship packages. During the negotiations, various options for cooperation were considered, but the contract was ultimately never concluded as the parties failed to reach an agreement.

However, during the negotiations, the "investor" tried in every possible way to "catch" the Azerbaijani COP29 team in various tricks, for example, demanding to remove references to "sustainable development" and compliance with "environmental norms" from the contract. He also asked for help in reaching out to SOCAR representatives and approached the COP29 Executive Director, Deputy Minister of Energy Elnur Soltanov, for this purpose. The latter, having preliminarily noted that he was speaking with his interlocutor as the Deputy Minister of Energy and not as a representative of COP29, forwarded the contacts of the potential investor (in fact, a representative of Global Witness) to SOCAR.

Considering that the main task of Global Witness was to point out the connection between COP29 and SOCAR, this contact is planned to be presented as a "flagrant disrespect" for environmental commitments on the part of the COP29 team. This is despite the fact that SOCAR acts as one of the main sponsors of COP29 and is conducting a large-scale decarbonization program, actively developing the "green" direction in energy.

In the coming days, the Azerbaijani reader should expect headlines about the "collusion of COP29 and the oil and gas lobby" and the alleged "attempts of Azerbaijan to conclude oil and gas deals" within the framework of COP29. In reality, there was no signed contract, no substantive negotiations about any specific "deals"—absolutely nothing that could resemble a "corpus delicti." So, let's eagerly await another informational "empty shell" from Global Witness, with the active support of the BBC.