TIRANA, October 3 – The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said on Monday that it has sanctioned the prime minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Fadil Novalic, as well as businessman Slobodan Stankovic and his company Integral Inzenjering A.D. Laktasi.
“Today’s action underscores how politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina are undermining democratic institutions and processes for their own political gain and to reward their patronage networks,” the US Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson, said in a press release quoted by Birn.
The sanctions mean that all their property and interests in property in the United States or in the possession or control of US citizens are frozen and must be reported to the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The US Treasury accused Novalic of misusing pensioners’ data during the 2018 elections for “the benefit of his own political party and contrary to [Bosnia and Herzegovina’s] law”. Novalic used the pensioners’ data to send letters “listing his accomplishments and promising increased pensions”.
In a report on the US sanctions on Bosnian PM the portal Syri.net under the headline ‘The man who set up the patronage scheme unsanctioned by the US’ said the case of Bosnia is identical to the scandal of patronage n Albania that was denounced before the parliamentary elections of April 25, 2021.
The data of over 900,000 Albanians were published online. The e-Albania platform was made available to Socialist Party (SP) electoral staffs and they knew everything about citizens over 18 years old in the district of Tirana.
“Each citizen was followed by a socialist patronage, intimidating him for voting,” said the report. For this scandal of immense proportions, the Albanian PM, Edi Rama not only did not take responsibility, but on the contrary publicly thanked the patronagists, considering them an important part of the SP to win the elections with blackmail and intimidation methods, as it actually turned out.
“Today, those who do not know what work, what invisible commitment is inside the SP, have discovered the word patronage, and bring it around and around, distorting its meaning. Due to the fact that they do not know that the SP is a familly where those engaged within the family work. They work voluntarily, after work, after school, they work taking their free time to cover the spiritual territory of this country,” said Rama a few days before April 25, 2021 when the parliamentary elections were held and no internationals, including US, found any violation in that patronage scheme similar to Bosnian one.
/Argumentum.al
