On July 14, 2016 the newspaper "Echo", published under the number 123 (3762) and on the website www.echo.az published an article "Can SOFAZ fraud the government?”. The stated article contains certain statements that are incorrect and provides distorted information about the activity of the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ).

All of the activities and decisions of SOFAZ are always widely covered by local and foreign media, and are reflected in the detailed reports, which are in line with international reporting standards and are freely accessible online. At the same time, the Fund is always ready to answer specific questions of media representatives and clarify any misunderstandings.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for the media to provide false information, which appears to be unfounded and inaccurate. Such cases may potentially contribute to a negative image of the Fund in the society. The recent article “Can SOFAZ fraud the government?” expresses completely unfounded suspicions about the Fund’s investments in real estate.

Any decision about the acquisition of a real estate asset is preceded by a rigorous analysis of the market and the region, taking into account factors such as geographic diversification, market size, liquidity, transparency of transactions, growth potential, volatility, yield, economic and political stability, etc. The choice of the property is an extensive process as a result of which the most suitable property is selected from a large number of proposals after a thorough evaluation of the proposals based on criteria such as lease term, vacancy of the building, tenant’s financial stability, high technical quality of the asset, and more.

Properties are valued in accordance with international valuation standards and best practices. Valuation is conducted both by the Fund and international specialized companies. Valuators, internationally recognized leading specialists that hold leading positions on local and global company rankings, deliver reports that reflect prices of our real estate assets based on international valuation standards. Valuation is conducted before the acquisition as well as on an annual basis after the property is purchased. Each of these reports is reviewed by international independent auditors, Big 4 companies, which are periodically replaced by the Fund (so far these have been PricewaterhouseCoopers, EY, and Deloitte). Thereby, the statements about the Fund’s real estate price manipulations on highly liquid and transparent markets in a presence of independent appraisers and auditors seem at best absolutely unprofessional and incompetent.

In order to prevent the spread of incorrect, unprofessional, and biased information, the Fund addresses media representatives to double-check any information on the Fund’s activities before publishing it. Media environment must be refined from false experts. As always, from our side we guarantee to deliver responses to all of your enquiries in a short time.