Trump son-in-law Kushner abandons plans for Belgrade hotel: Serbian president

AFP | Belgrade

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President Aleksandar Vucic confirmed yesterday that a planned hotel development of the former Yugoslav army headquarters would not go ahead, after the investment firm linked to Donald Trump’s son-in-law pulled out.

“We will now be left with a destroyed building, and it is only a matter of time before bricks and other parts start falling off it, because no one will ever touch it again,” Vucic told media in Belgrade.

On Monday, Jared Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, told the Wall Street Journal that it was withdrawing from the project.

“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 the firm told the newspaper.

The announcement came after Serbian Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic and three others were indicted over alleged abuse of office and forgery of an official document that had allowed the removal of the site’s “cultural-heritage status”.

Plans to transform the bombed-out former Yugoslav army headquarters in Belgrade into a high-rise hotel first stalled in May when allegations emerged that the move to revoke the building’s protected status had been based on a forged document.

Protests erupted afterwards in the capital, with demonstrators calling for the towering ruins to be preserved both for their unique modernist architecture and as a memorial to mark the 1999 NATO bombing that left the building damaged.

Vucic blamed critics of the project for destroying an investment of “at least 750 million euros” ($880 million).

“As a state and as a nation, we are major losers,” Vucic said.