“Sheikh Salman personally apologised to us. He recognized that the use of the music from the scandalous film in place of the anthem of Kazakhstan was completely a mistake of the organisers. He explained that the awards ceremony was conducted by a firm under contract,” Stavitskaya said.

The Kazakh news agency Tengri quoted team Coach Anvar Yunusmetov as saying tournament organizers had downloaded various countries’ national anthems from the Internet.