Jared Kushner has given up on building a Trump-branded hotel in Europe after the project sparked a major backlash and led to the indictment of a senior politician, according to news reports.
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law had been working for more than two years to gain permission to tear down the protected building in central Belgrade, Serbia, and build a $500 million luxury hotel and residence on the site.
A special prosecutor indicted a cabinet member and three other officials over the project on Monday, forcing Kushner’s firm to abandon the development, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“Because meaningful projects should unite rather than divide, and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the city of Belgrade, we are withdrawing our application and stepping aside at this time,” a spokesman for Kushner’s $4.8 billion private-equity firm, Affinity Partners, said hours after the indictment was returned.
The Serbian government had taken steps to strip the site, a former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense headquarters that was heavily damaged in a 1999 NATO bombing campaign, of its cultural-heritage protections and transfer it to Affinity Partners.
But in May, the semi-independent prosecutor’s office arrested an official for allegedly forging the documents that paved the way for the site’s demolition, and launched a wider investigation, WSJ reported.
At the time, Affinity Partners told the New York Times it was reviewing the matter and determining next steps.
Soon after, President Aleksandar Vučić’s government passed two Parliamentary measures that stripped the bombed-out building of its protected status, a move that opponents decried as unconstitutional and corrupt.
Thousands of protesters marched against the government’s approval, which was widely seen as an effort to appease the Trump administration, according to the Journal.
That perception probably wasn’t helped by Donald Trump Jr. visiting the country in the spring to try to prop up the government.
Affinity Partners, which is mainly funded by Middle Eastern governments, has said it had played no role in the review of the site’s cultural status, and Kusher has insisted that he tells his investors not to expect any favorable treatment from the U.S.
On Monday, the special prosecutor said it had indicted the minister of culture and three other officials for abusing their positions and falsifying documents.
Vučić has vowed to pardon any official caught up in the case. He says the aborted Trump hotel was not about politics but about tearing down an eyesore that the government has tried for years to redevelop.
Kushner’s project, however, was uniquely positioned to draw the ire of both the left and the right.
The building, which was damaged during a NATO air campaign meant to halt ethnic cleansing led by former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, remains a symbol of national identity on the right, with nationalists opposing its sale to the family involved in governing NATO’s powerful member state.
Left-wing politicians, on the other hand, blasted the sale as the giveaway of a public asset without an open process.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Affinity Partners and the Trump Organization for comment.
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