A court in Sarajevo has sentenced Amir Zukic, a former top ruling party official, to three years in prison for corruption.

Zukic, a former secretary-general of the ruling Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, or SDA, was found guilty of bribing and using political connections in 2016 to give jobs in state-run institutions to certain people.

The Sarajevo Municipal Court on July 29 sentenced four other people to prison terms of up to six years, and acquitted two people in the case.

Safet Bibic was sentenced to six years, and Senad Trako was sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison. Ramiz Karavdic was sentenced to two years in prison, Esad Dzananovic was sentenced to three years, while Nedzad Trako and Asim Sarajlic, who is also on the U.S. list, were acquitted.

The trial was part of Western-backed efforts to curb graft in the Balkan nation, which is struggling to recover economically from a devastating 1990s ethnic war.

The verdicts can be appealed.

The U.S. State Department in 2020 barred Zukic from entering the United States for his alleged involvement in “significant corruption."

The United States and its Western allies have slapped sanctions on individuals who are deemed as undermining the rule of law and stability in the Balkans.

Bosnia remains unstable and ethnically divided more than a quarter of a century after the end of the 1992-95 ethnic war that killed more than 100,000 people. The West wants to counter Russia's efforts to increase its influence in the region.

With reporting by AP