Bosnian Serb Entity Hires New US Lobbying Firm

The government of Bosnia's mainly Serbian entity, Republika Srpska, has signed a contract with Texas-based law firm McGinnis Lochridge to represent the RS and "provide general advice and representation regarding international legal and policy matters as requested by the Government from time to time".

The law firm anticipates that those matters will include, among others, "RS and BiH rights and obligations vis-a-vis the Office of the High Representative, the Peace Implementation Council, the UN Security Council, the OSCE, the EU, the Council of Europe, and others".

The RS will pay the firm a monthly retainer of $80,000 until the end of December. In total, the RS will pay the pay $640,000.

The contract was signed on April 25 by the RS Economic Relations and Regional Cooperation Minister Zlatan Klokic and came into effect on 1 May. The investigative journalist Casey Michael from US news website "The Think Progress" published the contract, which is marked "Internal", on Twitter.

At the end of June 2018, the RS ruling party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, hired US political campaign experts and former Donald Trump campaign associates Jason Osborne and Michael Rubino as lobbyists.

The result of the lobbying work of Rubin and Osborne was a meeting between the RS Prime Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic and Steve Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist.

In January 2017, the US Treasury confirmed sanctions against Bosnian Serb strongman and SNSD chief  Milorad Dodik for obstructing the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war by defying the orders of Bosnia's Constitutional Court.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC, stated that then then RS President had been "defying the...

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