The Trump family's $500 million luxury hotel project in Serbia is set to be built on the site of a bombed Ministry of Defense building and encountered embarrassing complications. The important documents that the Serbian government has relied on to deliver the contract are there this week, officials said.
President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his business partners plan to build luxury residential and commercial properties on the long-standing compound site, which will include Europe's first Trump International Hotel.
The head of the Serbian agency was charged with protecting cultural monuments, and authorities admitted that the former Yugoslav Defense Headquarters in Belgrade had been demolished and forged government documents that allowed them to be replaced by the Trump Hotel.
The project won interim approval from the Serbian government last year before the government officially moved to officially revoke the protected historic status of the former Ministry of Defense, which was heavily damaged by the 1999 North Atlantic Treaty Agency bombing campaign.
Serbian government officials say that the agency's leader, Golan Vasik, has now formulated expert opinions to justify the government's decision to strip its cultural heritage status.
“Vasic has forged a proposal to revoke the status of cultural property,” the Organized Crime Prosecutor's Office said in a statement.
Forged documents served as a legal basis for releasing protection from the complex. Vasic is currently facing charges of abuse of the office and forgery of official documents, Belgrade officials said this week.
Kushner's company, Affinity Partner, said in a statement that it did not play a role in reviewing the site's cultural status. Work has not begun on the site, and the fate of the project is not so clear now, the company said.
“Today, we have learned from media reports that a former Serbian government official who has no connection to our company is said to have forged documents related to the groundbreaking designation of the Belgrade Square Project,” the statement said. “We'll check this issue and decide on the next step.”
In Serbia, the prospect of a historic complex being demolished and replaced by a luxury hotel that benefits the US president has fueled rage.
Opposition leaders in the Serbian parliament have pointed to the acknowledgment that documents were forged as evidence that Trump and Kushner's family business secured a special deal.
“This was all about creating space for Trump,” said Dragan Jonik, a member of Congress who led the protest against the project.
The site's land will be leased to Mr. Kushner and his partners for 99 years under the terms of the interim agreement. It will be the first joint project between Kushner and Trump's family.
“Serbia is one of Europe's fastest growing countries, and we are extremely honored to be there,” the president's son, Eric Trump, added in an interview in January that “it's going to be fun bringing together families.”
In Belgrade, several protests are being held in Belgrade against the demolition of the site. The latest was held in March on the 26th anniversary of the NATO bombing.
The protests on the project site are just part of a nationwide student demonstration against the Serbian president and his government. They began in November after a concrete canopy collapsed at Novi Sad's train station, Serbia's second largest city, killing 16 people. Students and opposition politicians have condemned the collapse of poor work by contractors linked to corrupt officials.
President Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has visited Serbia twice in recent months to show support for President Alexander Vicz. These visits helped strengthen Mr Vicz's position amid the appeal of protesters to resign.
The Serbian project is one of the recent Trump family transactions involving foreign governments. Others include a $2 billion commitment from the United Arab Emirates to the Trump family's cryptocurrency company and luxury real estate projects in Qatar and Oman.
Ethics attorneys, including lawyers who served in the White House for Republican and Democratic administrations, said that the involvement of foreign governments in such real estate and cryptocurrency transactions would create the emergence of corruption, or at least the special treatment for the president's family.
“We're accused of the world of ethics attorneys for President George W. Bush,” said Richard Painter, who served as President George W. Bush's chief White House ethics lawyer. “It's extremely dangerous to have a president with a wide range of business interests around the world.”
