Democrats cry foul as U.S. lifts sanctions on Serb nationalist, MAGA-linked firm gets huge Bosnia energy contract

London — The involvement of a small American firm linked to associates of President Trump in an energy project in Bosnia and Herzegovina worth more than $1.5 billion has raised questions about how the White House could be using its leverage in the fragile Balkan state.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump was hailed by Dodik after his Serb nationalist party won one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's three presidency seats, which are split between Bosnia's Muslim, Serb and Croat ethnic groups under the country's complex power-sharing electoral system.

"If it had not been for Donald Trump's magnificent victory … we would probably be political corpses today," Dodik told supporters in a speech, in which he also thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his support.

AAFS Infrastructure & Energy, a company incorporated in the U.S. last year and headed by President Trump's former personal attorney Jesse Binnall and Joseph Flynn, the brother of Trump ally General Michael Flynn, is close to securing a contract to develop the Southern Interconnection Gas Pipeline.

The pipeline would connect Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia's gas network, allowing Bosnia to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its neighbors. The project, which is valued at around $1.7 billion according to the Croatian government, would help make Bosnia and Herzegovina less reliant on Russian gas imports.

On its website, AAFS describes itself as a company focused on "energy security, project structuring, capital alignment, and long-term regional infrastructure development."

The secessionist leader Dodik, who until recently served as the president of Bosnia's self-governing, Serb-run territory called Republika Srpska, has long been accused of undermining the U.S. brokered Dayton Accords, which ended the bloody sectarian violence between Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia in the 1990s.

A congressional report published last month by House Democrats, titled "Pay for Play in the Balkans," alleges that those two decisions — the removal of sanctions on Dodik and his decision to not oppose the pipeline — are directly linked.

AAFS Infrastructure and Energy LLC did not respond to a CBS News request for comment.

Those same filings show that Flynn was paid $100,000 for that work by RRB Strategies, a lobbying firm run by Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was convicted in 2011 of 18 counts of corruption and spent nearly eight years in a federal prison before being pardoned by President Trump last year.

Blagoyevich's firm originally signed a contract to "provide communications and public affairs support on behalf of the Republic of Srpska" in March 2025, separate FARA filings reviewed by CBS News show.

CBS News sought comment from email aliases associated with Flynn and Blagojevich, but did not receive any response by the time of publication.