On a graffitied Sarajevo backstreet, a path leads past an overgrown patch of garden to a white door. Beyond is the registered office of a company that is on the brink of winning contracts worth more than $1bn.
AAFS Infrastructure and Energy is close to securing a concession to build and operate a pipeline across the Balkans to allow fossil gas shipped from the US to replace supplies that come from Russia. “This could be the most important infrastructure project ever in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” says one of the country’s top officials, who, like others, asks to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive negotiations.
The company has no record of even attempting anything close to this scale. What it does have is personal connections to Donald Trump.
One of AAFS’s representatives is a Washington lawyer who has acted for the Trumps in political cases. The other is the brother of the president’s former national security adviser. Both were part of a campaign that is close to Trump’s heart: the effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
A Guardian investigation, based on interviews with current and former Bosnian and US officials, leaked documents and corporate paperwork, has examined the obscure company that has been thrust into the global struggle for energy supremacy. It offers a glimpse of how international relations are changing under a presidency that blurs the line between government policy and the enrichment of the ruling family and those around it.
“There is a logic, in our current world, of having administration-connected people involved in big economic projects or investments,” says a former senior US official in the region. “It is unsavoury but so much of my country’s politics is unsavoury these days.”
In the former Yugoslavia, the stakes are higher than just who might get rich. US intervention could undermine the peace deal it brokered in 1995 to end a war that killed 100,000, many of them Muslim Bosniak civilians massacred by Serb paramilitaries. A generation on, Bosnia’s ethnic leaders are still manoeuvring for advantage.
US officials have left Bosnia’s leaders in no doubt about what the Trump administration wants: the go-ahead for AAFS’s pipeline.
AAFS’s Maga connections
When the Guardian knocks at AAFS’s Sarajevo address, a woman calls down from an upstairs window that its local representative will be back soon. Amer Bekan arrives a few minutes later. A large middle-aged man, he says AAFS’s office will be moving to a big building with 100 employees.
Bekan’s online CV calls him an “investor and entrepreneur with extensive experience”. He has tried politics as well. After coming last with 116 votes in a 2016 run for mayor in central Sarajevo, another campaign in 2020 led to him being accused of abusing the elections for personal gain, an allegation he denied.
Bekan registered a Bosnian company called AAFS in 2021. It was only after he brought in his American partners last year that it hit the big time. Neither he nor they will say how they were introduced.
Bekan’s AAFS is now owned by a US company of the same name that was registered in November. Located in a tourist district by the Potomac River, the address AAFS gives for its Washington office sits between a Lebanese restaurant and an Irish pub. A sign identifies it as the premises of Binnall Law Group.
Jesse Binnall is a leading lawyer fighting the Maga cause. He was an aide to the 2016 campaign that carried Trump to the White House. In 2020, he was a leading voice undermining Joe Biden’s victory. He declared: “Donald Trump won … after you account for the fraud and irregularities that occurred.” He defended Trump and his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, against a lawsuit that sought to hold them responsible when rioters tried to overturn the result by storming the Capitol building.
Since Trump’s return to power last year, Binnall has secured a $1.25m settlement from the justice department for Michael Flynn, who was briefly national security adviser in the president’s first term. Despite having admitted lying to the FBI about covert contacts with Russia, Flynn alleged wrongful prosecution.
Binnall also came to know Flynn’s brother Joe, a healthcare entrepreneur. They were fellow campaigners in the effort to discredit Biden’s victory. Flynn served as president of one of the movement’s best-funded vehicles, the America Project. And he was an adviser to Trump’s 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns.
The White House referred questions to the state department, which said: “The Southern Interconnection gas pipeline, which has been a [US government] priority for the past three administrations, will expand and diversify Bosnia and Herzegovina’s energy sector, giving BiH greater control over its energy supply by providing access to market-based natural gas and reducing dependence on a single, unreliable source.”
Flynn and Binnall’s qualifications for a Balkans infrastructure venture are not immediately apparent. But since they joined, the project has enjoyed the full-throated support of the Trump administration.
No competitive tender process
Binnall, Flynn and Bekan’s initial discussions with Bosnian officials last autumn were about a $300m renovation of two airports. Then the Bosnian officials suggested they take on a much more significant project: the Southern Interconnection pipeline.
The US has long supported the plan to connect Bosnia to a gas terminal on Croatia’s coast, which would reduce Vladimir Putin’s influence in southern Europe. During Biden’s time, the idea was for Bosnia’s state gas company to run the project. But the competing interests of Bosnia’s ethnic factions caused delay after delay.
While some Bosnian officials were wary of handing the project to foreign private interests, others saw enlisting a company connected to Trump as a chance to break the deadlock.
Time was running short. Bosnia is a candidate to join the EU, and Brussels has set a September 2027 deadline to cease buying gas from Russia, the source of Bosnia’s entire supply.
Some senior Bosnian figures calculated that commissioning an American company could help not just energy security but safety more broadly in a region where war is a living memory. As Bekan says: “The US government protects its investments.”
Yet some analysts fear Bosnia risks swapping one bully for another. No one appears to want to risk angering Trump, even if it means entrusting their hopes for a vital new energy artery to a venture with no demonstrated ability to get it done.
Asked who AAFS’s shareholders are, Bekan says Binnall and Flynn plus others he declines to name. He suggests financing could come from “investment funds in the United States”, but says he cannot provide more information.
Binnall says: “We are the right team for this. No other group combines on-the-ground presence in Bosnia with strong support in America. And we’re excited to take the leap because we believe Bosnia Herzegovina is the future.”
A confidential AAFS proposal seen by the Guardian says the pipeline will cost €300m (£260m) with another €900m (£780m) for three power plants, with funding coming not from the Bosnian state but equity and debt. It does not specify what returns Flynn, Binnall and others involved expect for themselves.
In March, new Bosnian legislation stipulated that AAFS should be the pipeline contractor. There has been no competitive tender, the usual way to ensure contracts go to a competent bidder for a fair price.
Transparency International said: “Establishing such a practice in a country with one of the highest levels of corruption in Europe would lead to catastrophic consequences in the implementation of strategically important projects such as the Southern Interconnection gas pipeline.”
Days later, as the Guardian revealed, the EU’s ambassador sent Bosnia’s leaders a private warning that they should be consulting with Brussels on any changes in energy policy to “avoid missing out on opportunities for further integration, as well as financial opportunities”.
The US is undeterred. “This partnership strengthens energy independence and ends reliance on Russian gas,” its Sarajevo embassy posted on X in April. “A new era for energy security in the Western Balkans has begun.”
Yet any new era will not begin until the Southern Interconnection is built. For that to happen, the Trump administration will need the friendship of the man who wants to break the country up.
Ultranationalist wants to rip up peace accord
Milorad Dodik, the ultranationalist leader of Bosnia’s Serbs, was until recently treated as a pariah by Washington.
Biden’s administration accused Dodik of abusing public office “to accumulate personal wealth through graft, bribery, and other forms of corruption” and expanded sanctions against him and his family. “His divisive ethno-nationalistic rhetoric reflects his efforts to … divert attention from his corrupt activities,” a US Treasury statement said. Dodik called the sanctions “lies”.
When Trump retook the presidency, Dodik embarked on a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to cultivate the Trump administration’s support and have the sanctions lifted. The lobbyists styled Dodik’s Serb nationalists as Trump’s allies against Islam. One of them was Michael Flynn, who earned $100,000 for a month’s work.
In October, without explanation, the Trump administration cancelled the sanctions. On 7 April, Donald Trump Jr, the custodian of the family business empire, landed in Banja Luka, the main city in the Serbian half of Bosnia, for an event in his honour.
Dodik’s son, Igor, gave Trump Jr a warm welcome. “Your presence speaks volumes,” he said. “We depend on you and we rely on you. In return, you, America and the Republican administration led by your father will have a reliable, truthful and Christian ally in this part of the world.”
Michael Murphy, a former US ambassador to Bosnia, says Dodik is currying favour in Trump circles as he seeks to rip up the 1995 peace accord by declaring the Serb region independent. “He wants them to embrace his larger agenda. In order to get that, he can’t screw with the pipeline.” Those embracing him, he adds, are “playing with fire”.
Under Bosnia’s power-sharing arrangement, the Serbs could veto the pipeline. Dodik, who remains their leader despite giving up his official position, has every reason to do so. Like the recently defeated Victor Orbán in Hungary, Dodik is an ally of Putin. Not only does Bosnia’s existing pipeline bring Russian gas, magnifying Putin’s leverage in the Balkans, it also runs across the Serbs’ territory, giving them sway over energy supplies.
But a senior Bosnian Serb politician says: “I saw this myself: Americans here have a number one priority and that’s the pipeline. They are very, very keen on this. Dodik, like everyone else, was told: Don’t play around with the project.”
Trump Jr did not mention the pipeline or AAFS during his event. But he extolled the benefits of buying American gas. “That’s a no-brainer,” he said. “You can solve so many problems, both business-wise and, frankly, geopolitically on this one issue. I think it’s a major opportunity.”
On 21 April, shortly after Trump Jr’s visit, Dodik indicated he would not obstruct Binnall and Flynn’s plan. That leaves the Trump associates’ takeover of a crucial European energy project close to complete.
Additional reporting by Joseph Gedeon in Washington