The wartime Bosnian Serb president first appeared before The Hague court last Thursday. Official reports said he was arrested in Belgrade on July 21 after more than a decade on the run.
"Payment number RW 20-036-008/2 was made to an anonymous account in the British Virgin Islands on July 23, two days after the news of Karadzic's arrest was released, as a reward for information that helped catch the dangerous fugitive," Press said, citing Western diplomats.
The paper said the money was paid by the State Department's Rewards for Justice Program, which usually pays for information that helps avert terrorist attacks.
The Rewards for Justice Program earlier said the reward had been paid for assistance in the killing of an Afghan militant leader.
However, the paper said the only such incident close in time to the transaction was the killing of Al Qaeda's main chemical and biological weapons expert, Abu Khabab al Masri, which occurred at least four days after the money was paid.
The paper said that on the day Radovan Karadzic was caught, British secret agents confirmed that the reward had been paid.
Karadzic's attorney, Svetozar Vujacic, who earlier said his client had not been detained on July 21 as was officially announced, but on July 18, said he suspected the people who caught Karadzic three days before the official arrest could have received the reward.
Karadzic faces 11 counts of war crimes. The charges include the massacre of 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 and the almost four-year siege of Sarajevo, during which around 10,000 people died.
The former Bosnian Serb leader is the most prominent war crimes suspect to appear in The Hague since Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in jail in 2006 before his trial could be completed.
His arrest came shortly after the election of a pro-European government in Serbia and the appointment of a new security and intelligence agency chief. The arrest of Karadzic was one of the conditions set by the European Union for Serbia's membership in the 27-nation bloc.
