VoA: U.S. Aware of Claims About Financing of Blacklisted North Kosovo Firms

Kfor, Kosovo (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

The United States is aware of the reports about companies in the north of Kosovo that are on the list of U.S. sanctions being financed from the Serbian budget, Voice of America (VoA) learned at the U.S. Department of State on July 27.

"The United States takes the claims about material support to sanctioned entities seriously," reads the statement of an unnamed spokesperson of the Department of State.

However, the statement does not define what the Serbian authorities should do in connection with the claims about the state's financing of 13 citizens of Serb ethnicity and 20 companies connected with Zvonko Veselinovic and Milan Radoicic, or if a response could be expected from the U.S.. Zvonko Veselinovic and Milan Radoicic, whom the public in Serbia and Kosovo believe to have a hand in a number of illegal dealings, and are at the same time suspects in the case of the murder of a leader of the Kosovo Serbs, Oliver Ivanovic, were placed under U.S. sanctions in December 2021, reads the report of VoA.

It was at that time that Veselinovic was marked as the leader of an organized criminal group and one of the most corrupt people in Kosovo, and Radoicic as his deputy. Information about Serbia paying millions of euros to individuals and companies in north Kosovo that are connected with Veselinovic and Radoicic, who are under U.S. sanctions, was published by Radio Free Europe on July 25.