Definitely! It's plausible to me anyway, having been there and done that. :-)

But I can imagine myself in the place of a PR person who doesn't fully understand the technical issues. And somehow it sounds better in the moment to say "that was real data from a few years ago" rather than "that was fake data that we just made up!"

Of course I don't know what actually happened in Azerbaijan, but I can sure relate to the possible scenarios.