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Victoria Nuland, the official representative of the U.S. Department of State, during Daily Press Briefing, commented on the statement of the Azerbaijani authorities accusing the U.S. NGO NDI, the National Democratic Institute, in illegal fundings of the opposition groups in Azerbaijan. Nuland’s statement is on the official site of the U.S. Department of State.

“I don’t have any information on that particular assertion by the government. I don’t know whether it happened in the last couple of days. We’ll check into it. But as you know, all of our U.S.-funded democracy NGOs operate within extremely tight guidelines. They don’t fund any particular party or any particular ideological approach,” Nuland stated.

According to her, these NGOs fund the process of democratic elections and party building in an evenhanded manner across the political spectrum.

On the last week, Attorney General Zakir Garalov accused the representative of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Azerbaijan Alex Grigorevsa in committing unlawful acts, stating that around 2 million dollars were withdrawn from Grigorevs’ bank account without noting the purpose of the withdrawal. Earlier, Azerbaijani journalist Eynulla Fatullayev published an article titled "2 million dollars for “Facebook revolution", accusing the U.S. organization in financing the Azerbaijani opposition.

Note also that, in February 2013 Azerbaijani parliament adopted amendments to tighten control over the usage of grants and donations from NGOs, religious and other structures. According to the amendments penalties for absence of registration of contracts, as well as receiving benefits from foreign NGOs without the grant contract, etc are seriously increased. As "Turan" noted, in reality it means a further tightening of activities of many human rights and democratic NGOs in Azerbaijan. Many of these NGOs do not have state registration as the authorities have refused them. However, they receive grants from foreign donors. Now, the state bodies of Azerbaijan will refuse registration of grant agreements, referring to the fact that the NGOs do not have state registration.