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A $500m project to build Donald Trump’s first Trump International Hotel in Europe could be in jeopardy, after a Serbian official admitted to forging a document to advance the development, according to a report.
The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who served in his first administration alongside his wife, Ivanka Trump, is seeking permission via his Miami-based property company, Affinity Partners, to build on a site in Belgrade where the remains of the old Yugoslav Ministry of Defense headquarters still stand.
The compound was badly damaged in a U.S.-led Nato bombing campaign during the Kosovo War of 1999.
Trump has reportedly been interested in acquiring the site since 2014, unconcerned by local unease about replacing a historical landmark associated with wartime suffering with a lavish American luxury resort.
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He finally secured tentative approval last year, but the project has now hit a fresh administrative obstacle, according to The New York Times.
Goran Vasic, former director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, has been arrested after admitting to inventing an expert opinion in order to justify the decision to strip the site of its protected status, which shielded it from demolition.
The legal protection was removed on November 14 last year, less than two weeks after Trump won the U.S. presidential election, allowing the project to move ahead.
“Vasic forged a proposal for a decision to revoke the status of cultural property,” the Office of the Prosecutor for Organized Crime said in a statement.
Affinity Partners has responded with a statement of its own denying any involvement or knowledge of the affair.
“Today we learned from media reports that a former Serbian government official with no connection to our firm allegedly falsified documents related to the landmark designation of the Belgrade Square project,” it read.
“We will review this matter and determine next steps.”
Even before Vasic’s confession, the proposed development had attracted protests in Serbia, notably on March 24 this year when the 26th anniversary of the bombing campaign was observed.
But the country’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, has been receptive to the prospect of the Trump Hotel Belgrade being realized. He hosted Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. and visited Florida in April in the hope of meeting his U.S. counterpart, but he cut the trip short on health grounds without achieving his aim.
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The situation arises at a time when Trump is facing growing criticism about his efforts to expand his business empire while occupying the White House.
His first major overseas trip to the Middle East this week has been overshadowed by ethical objections to his decision to accept a $400m Boeing jet as a gift from the Qatari royal family.
Members of his family have meanwhile been busy touting for business in the same region, announcing a $5.5bn deal to build an 18-hole Trump International Golf Club in Qatar and a $2bn commitment from the United Arab Emirates towards the family’s new cryptocurrency exchange.
Qatari state-backed funds were also part of a $6bn funding round for Trump adviser Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, and another Qatari fund has invested in Kushner’s private equity firm.
