An obscure company with personal ties to Donald Trump is close to securing contracts worth over $1bn to build a gas pipeline across the Balkans, a Guardian investigation has found. AAFS Infrastructure and Energy, registered in a Sarajevo backstreet, aims to replace Russian gas supplies with US fossil gas shipped across the Atlantic. The project is described by a senior Bosnian official as “the most important infrastructure project ever in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
The company has no track record of projects on this scale. Its key representatives include Jesse Binnall, a Washington lawyer who has acted for the Trumps in political cases, and Joe Flynn, brother of the president’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Both were involved in efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat. The Guardian’s investigation, based on interviews, leaked documents and corporate records, reveals how the Trump administration is pushing Bosnian leaders to approve the pipeline, blurring the line between policy and personal enrichment.
AAFS’s local representative, Amer Bekan, registered the Bosnian company in 2021. After bringing in his American partners last year, the firm gained momentum. Bekan, who previously ran unsuccessfully for mayor, declined to explain how the partnership formed. The US company AAFS is registered at the same address as Binnall Law Group in Washington, DC. Binnall has been a prominent figure in the “Stop the Steal” movement and recently secured a $1.25m settlement for Michael Flynn over alleged wrongful prosecution.
The pipeline project carries high stakes for the region. US intervention could undermine the 1995 Dayton peace deal that ended a war in which 100,000 died. Ethnic leaders in Bosnia continue to jostle for power. A former senior US official noted that “having administration-connected people involved in big economic projects… is unsavoury but so much of my country’s politics is unsavoury these days.”
