It was always a tricky location, but an investment firm founded by the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner thought a $500 million luxury hotel project on the site of a bombed-out Yugoslav military headquarters in downtown Belgrade could be a winner. On the drawing board was a Trump-branded hotel, high-end apartments, stores and a museum.
The old army building remains, even today, in ruins. It was bombed by NATO forces in 1999 to stop the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo and push Serbian forces out of the territory. The gutted headquarters over time became a historic site — a kind of de facto war memorial.
Plans to raze the ruins and begin construction on the new Trump project, however, came to a screeching halt earlier this week. On Monday, Kushner’s company said it is backing away. On the same day, Serbian prosecutors filed charges against Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic on suspicion of abusing his office to support the project. Three other officials were also charged for their role in the removal of cultural heritage status for the dilapidated building.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the company’s decision to pull out.
“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,” said a statement from Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners.
Serbia’s embattled president, Aleksandar Vucic, raged against the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime for charging his minister. He also threatened to indict the student “blockaders” who have protested at the site demanding its preservation.
The same student-led movement has been demonstrating against the Vucic government for the past year, staging some of the largest rallies in Serbia’s history, calling the regime riddled with corruption and cronyism. They have been pressing for early elections.
After the indictment and decision to halt the project, Vucic said Tuesday that “both as a state and as a people, we are the big losers.” The Serbia president estimated the loss of investment at $880 million. He accused the protesters of doing great economic harm to Serbia.
The Serb leader’s critics say he is growing increasingly authoritarian and isolated. Vucic on Tuesday threatened to personally file a criminal complaint against those who derailed the hotel project. “I will prepare it thoroughly against all individuals who took part in this witch hunt and in the destruction of this investment, against individuals from the police, against individuals from the prosecution, and against other individuals who contributed to the collapse and further economic undermining of the Republic of Serbia.”
After Trump’s election victory last year, the Serbian government moved ahead with plans to allow construction on the site, including a 99-year lease on the land in the heart of Belgrade. Last month, Serbia’s national assembly passed a special law allowing the real estate project to go forward.
Instead, the special prosecutors filed charges against his culture minister on Monday alongside three others, for abuse of their official positions and forgery of an official document, for illegally removing the cultural heritage status of the site.
Vucic has called their cases “fabricated.”
One group of protesters, calling themselves Student Blockaders, applauded the decision to halt the project, but warned, “In Serbia, nothing should be taken for granted. … The fight for preservation continues and the guard must not be lowered.”
Kushner has aided the Trump administration as a special envoy seeking peace deals in Ukraine and Gaza. Meanwhile, his private equity firm has raised billions from sovereign wealth funds abroad. Trump family members, as real estate developers, are pursuing building projects around the world, including in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar. The White House has said there is no conflict of interest.
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