Politics

Trump-linked firm nears Balkan gas pipeline contracts

Guardian investigation traces AAFS ties to Trump allies and Bosnia powerbrokers, diversification pitch collides with thin track record

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Donald Trump Jr, pictured arriving in Banja Luka, the main city in the Serbian half of Bosnia for a meeting with political leaders in April, was given a warm welcome by the son of ultranationalist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump Jr, pictured arriving in Banja Luka, the main city in the Serbian half of Bosnia for a meeting with political leaders in April, was given a warm welcome by the son of ultranationalist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images theguardian.com
(From left) Jesse Binnall, John Ginkel, chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Joe Flynn in Sarajevo in January. Photograph: X (From left) Jesse Binnall, John Ginkel, chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Joe Flynn in Sarajevo in January. Photograph: X theguardian.com
One of AAFS’s representatives is a Washington lawyer, Jesse Binnall, who has acted for the Trumps in political cases. Photograph: Greg Nash/UPI/Shutterstock One of AAFS’s representatives is a Washington lawyer, Jesse Binnall, who has acted for the Trumps in political cases. Photograph: Greg Nash/UPI/Shutterstock theguardian.com
The address AAFS gives for its Washington office sits between a Lebanese restaurant and an Irish pub and a sign identifies it as the premises of Binnall Law Group. Photograph: Joseph Gedeon/The Guardian The address AAFS gives for its Washington office sits between a Lebanese restaurant and an Irish pub and a sign identifies it as the premises of Binnall Law Group. Photograph: Joseph Gedeon/The Guardian theguardian.com
Jesse Binnall secured a $1.25m settlement from the justice department for Michael Flynn, pictured, national security adviser in the president’s first term. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP Jesse Binnall secured a $1.25m settlement from the justice department for Michael Flynn, pictured, national security adviser in the president’s first term. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP theguardian.com

A little-known company with ties to Donald Trump is close to securing Balkan energy contracts worth more than $1 billion, according to a Guardian investigation, as regional leaders weigh a fossil-gas pipeline pitched as a route for US shipments to replace Russian supply. The reporting says the firm, AAFS Infrastructure and Energy, has no track record running projects of comparable scale, yet US officials have signalled to Bosnia’s leaders that Washington wants the project approved.

According to the Guardian, the push has unfolded alongside political courtship in Bosnia’s Serb-majority entity, including an April visit by Donald Trump Jr to Banja Luka, where he met political leaders and was welcomed by the son of Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik. The article describes a web of personal connections around AAFS: one representative is a Washington lawyer who has acted for the Trumps in political cases; another is the brother of Trump’s former national security adviser. Both, the Guardian reports, were involved in efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat.

The Balkans’ energy map has become a geopolitical project as much as an engineering one. After the shock of reduced Russian flows, governments and utilities have scrambled for alternative routes and suppliers, and “diversification” has become a political slogan that can carry expensive infrastructure past skeptical publics. In that setting, a pipeline proposal that promises US gas has an obvious constituency: local politicians get to claim strategic alignment with Washington, while contractors and intermediaries get paid long before any household sees a lower bill.

But the Guardian’s account also shows how hard it is to separate state policy from private deal-making when access itself is the scarce commodity. If approvals depend on whether leaders can satisfy a foreign capital’s preferred counterparty, procurement becomes less about competence and more about connections. The risk is then pushed outward: host countries inherit the financial and political fallout if a project underdelivers, while the winners are those who collect fees, influence, and optionality during the permitting phase.

The reporting places this against Bosnia’s still-fragile postwar settlement. A former senior US official quoted by the Guardian warns that renewed US intervention in the region could unsettle the 1995 peace deal that ended the Bosnian war. Bosnia’s ethnic power structure has survived by turning external patrons into leverage at home; large energy projects add another channel for that bargaining, because they create chokepoints—permits, land rights, operating concessions—that can be traded for political cover.

In Sarajevo, the Guardian found AAFS registered locally through Amer Bekan, who described plans to expand to a larger office and employ 100 people. His online CV calls him an investor and entrepreneur, but his past forays into politics—an unsuccessful mayoral run and later accusations of election abuse that he denied—underline how easily business credentials and political ambition blur in a market where contracts are the main prize.

AAFS registered its Bosnian company in 2021, the Guardian reports. The pipeline it is chasing is being sold as a strategic alternative to Russia, even as the most valuable asset in the deal appears to be proximity to power rather than experience building pipelines.