Trump-Linked Investors Want to Pour $1.8 Billion Into Bosnia
(Bloomberg) -- Two figures who worked on President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election are pursuing a major infrastructure project in Bosnia.
Jesse Binnall, a former Trump attorney, and Joseph Flynn, brother of Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn — both of whom supported Trump’s failed election reversal effort — run a company called AAFS Infrastructure and Energy that plans to invest €1.5 billion ($1.8 billion) in airports, gas power plants and a gas pipeline in the Balkan country.
AAFS wants to develop and run the main international airport in the capital of Sarajevo and another in the city of Mostar, Amer Bekan, an executive at AAFS, said in a phone interview on Thursday.
The government of the Muslim-Croat Federation, one of two entities that comprise Bosnia, is evaluating their offer on the airports. An answer is expected “within weeks,” Bekan said. Government officials accepted AAFS’s gas power plant proposal, and a separate contract will soon be signed, he added.
The company is expanding its business interests in the region, already a focal point for other dealmakers in Trump’s inner circle. This month, Wyoming-based AAFS secured a contract to build a key natural gas pipeline in Bosnia worth €300 million.
Diplomats from the US embassy in Sarajevo supported their bid for the pipeline job. On Wednesday, the embassy praised the parliament decision as a big step for the country’s energy security.
“The fact that the pipeline project passed in parliament almost by acclamation shows the power of US diplomacy,” Bekan said from Vienna. “Earlier local political divisions over how to build the gas pipeline were overcome. For Bosnia this investment also brings additional stability, opening a path to other investors.”
The pipeline, which will connect Bosnia to the European gas network via Croatia, is key in breaking the country’s total dependence on Russian natural gas. It is expected to begin operating as early as 2028, just as the EU’s ban on Russian gas has kicked in.
The pipeline has been planned for years, but it was obstructed by bickering between two of the country’s factions, Bosnian Croats and Muslims, over control. The Biden administration criticized Bosnian Croat leadership in 2024 for stalling the project.
AAFS expects to run the pipeline for 30 years, with a possible extension for another 20, while paying a concession fee to the state, Bekan said.
The company plans to invest about €250 million in the Sarajevo airport, including constructing a second terminal for low-cost flights and an additional €50 million to develop the Mostar airport.
The projects will be financed by AAFS capital and strategic partners, such as US banks and financial institutions, Bekan said.
“We were the only one to give a direct offer for a project that is strategically and economically crucial for Bosnia-Herzegovina,” he said. “The political compromise was found as the offer includes US capital with US political support, so it has a security aspect built in as well.”
Elsewhere in the region, the Trump Organization also plans to build Trump Tower Bucharest in Romania’s capital and a golf course for over $500 million.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has announced plans to develop an island in Albania into a $1.65 billion resort.
Bosnia-Herzegovina is divided between Bosnian Serbs on one side and Muslims and ethnic Croats on the other, following a US-brokered peace agreement that ended a bloody war in 1995.
Ethnic and political divisions have continued to paralyze the country of 3.2 million, whose antagonistic parts are tied by a weak central government. Bosnia seeks to join the European Union but there’s no target date for its potential entry, as the country has been slow to implement reforms needed to join.
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