Politicians from Republika Srpska who work in state institutions have been receiving their salaries through the Republika Srpska Post for the past few months, after their bank accounts were closed because they were blacklisted by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
In March of this year, banks throughout the RS, and then in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, started closing the accounts of legal and physical persons who were blacklisted. Since then, no other bank has been allowed to open an account with these persons because the US Embassy in Sarajevo has clearly stated on several occasions that all those who contribute to circumventing the sanctions risk the consequences.
Milorad Dodik, the unofficial spokesman for those who found themselves under sanctions, said even then that one of the options was to receive salaries through the Republika Srpska Post Office. Experts, including Svetlana Cenić, commented at the time that this was not possible because for such a thing those persons must have open accounts in commercial banks, according to Klix.ba.
Nevertheless, the Ministry of Finance of Bosnia and Herzegovina dared to go that way, consciously countering the Americans. They sent a public invitation to all three post offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina to apply in order to pay the salaries of civil servants who are under sanctions. The only one that responded to this call was the Post Office of the RS, through which all politicians in state institutions who come from the RS now receive their salaries.
The only thing that remains unknown is whether the situation has been resolved for the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the PSBiH Marinko Čavara from the HDZ. Unofficially, he is the only one not yet getting paid.
His party tried to save him when Predrag Kožul proposed to the House of Representatives of the PSBiH to enable the payment of salaries in cash to state officials who are under US sanctions. Then the Americans immediately spoke up and warned that such a solution should not be adopted.
“Supporting such activities and sanctioned entities entails potential consequences,” the US Embassy emphasized.
Earlier, SNSD leader Dodik publicly called out the US Embassy on several occasions, saying that one of “their men” “walked around the banks in the RS and threatened” that they should not pay salaries to blacklists.
US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O’Brien said on one occasion that the US Embassy explained to the banks “the risks within the existing sanctions.”
“We do the same thing in countries all over the world, and only in Banja Luka is the US embassy accused of their economic situation. Sanctions mean that our system cannot be used for corrupt activities,” said O’Brien.
It remains completely unclear how the Ministry of Finance of Bosnia and Herzegovina sent an invitation to the post offices to pay salaries to blacklists without a public tender, especially considering that these persons do not have accounts in commercial banks.
This raises the question of whether the Post of the RS is now facing sanctions, as well as the Ministry of Finance itself, given the obviously illegal support for those affected by the sanctions, as the Americans have repeatedly warned.
