US imposes sanctions related to Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik

By Kanishka Singh and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on family members and the wider business network of Bosnian Serb nationalist and pro-Russian leader Milorad Dodik, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

Dodik, president of the autonomous Serb Republic, is already under U.S. and UK sanctions. He has long advocated the secession of the Serb-dominated region from Bosnia.

On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Bosnian Serb leader’s two adult children – his son Igor Dodik and daughter Gorica Dodik – and their business companies, which Washington says facilitated the Bosnian Serb leader’s ongoing corruption.

“Today’s designations aim to disrupt elements of the financial network that personally enriches and enables Dodik at the expense of the territorial integrity and functional governance of Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with the general economic wellbeing of the Republika Srpska,” the U.S. State Department said separately on Friday.

The United States says Dodik has undermined the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. The accords ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian war in which 100,000 were killed, dividing the country into two autonomous regions, the Serb Republic and the Bosniak-Croat Federation, linked via a weak central government.

The U.S. Treasury Department also removed Aleksandar Karadzic, son of former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, from a sanctions list.

Family members of the former Bosnian Serb political leader, who was convicted of war crimes for his role in the 1990s Balkan conflict, sued the U.S. Treasury Department in May over their continued inclusion on the U.S. sanctions list.

Aleksandar Karadzic “completed an administrative delisting process in which OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) considered all the available information. OFAC evaluates all requests for reconsideration and retains the right to reimpose sanctions should they meet the criteria for designation,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said.