Trump family hotel project in Serbia in doubt after forgery probe

AFP | Belgrade

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The future of a luxury property development by Donald Trump's son-in-law in Belgrade has been thrown into doubt over suspicions that documents used to revoke the site's protected status were forged.

Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners signed a 99-year land deal with the Serbian government last year to redevelop the former Yugoslav Army Headquarters, just months after its designation as a "cultural asset" was removed.

No work has yet started at the site, which has not been rebuilt since it was bombed several times in 1999 during the NATO air campaign that ended the war in Kosovo.

But on Tuesday, the prosecutor's office said it had opened an investigation into whether the document used by the government to revoke the building's protected status was forged.

The head of Serbia's Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Goran Vasic, was arrested on suspicion of "forgery of an official document" and admitted the charge in court.

He was given a restraining order barring him from contacting witnesses, the court told AFP in a statement on Friday.

The government has so far kept tight-lipped about the case but President Aleksandar Vucic, at a European leaders' summit, denied "any halt to the project plans".

"There was no forgery of any kind and we will discuss everything with everyone," he told a news conference in Tirana on Friday.

But Kushner's company Affinity Partners told AFP they had played no role in the review of the site's cultural status and that the fate of the project was now unclear.