Presidential Pressure Behind Closed Doors
Leaked documents and insider testimony reveal that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić personally orchestrated an alleged scheme to strip protected status from a historic Belgrade site to advance a $500m hotel and residential tower project for Donald Trump’s family and Jared Kushner, according to an investigation published by the Guardian. The project centers on the General Staff building, the former Yugoslav ministry of defence in central Belgrade, which was bombed by Nato forces in 1999 and remains a deeply symbolic landmark. The building, an architectural gem seen as an emblem of resistance to the Nazis, was already cherished when Nato forces bombed it during its campaign to force Slobodan Milošević to withdraw from Kosovo, deepening its resonance. Vučić himself had reaffirmed the General Staff building’s legally protected status in 2016.
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Vučić summoned Dubravka Đukanović, then the director of the country’s institute for the protection of cultural monuments, to a meeting at the presidential palace on February 6, 2024. The president demanded that Đukanović rescind the building’s legally protected status to accommodate an unspecified foreign investor. Under Serbian law, stripping the General Staff building of its protected status was not in Đukanović’s gift; her institute would have to commission an expert opinion concluding that protected status was no longer merited. Witnesses described the meeting as intimidating, noting that Vučić told heritage officials they were incompetent and made it clear they must comply or resign.
The 99-Year Lease and Regime Indictments
A plausible explanation for the presidential pressure emerged the following month when an agreement between the Serbian government and Kushner’s real estate company leaked. Married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, Kushner had been an influential White House aide during his father-in-law’s first term and concentrated on his investment fund after Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. By early 2024, Trump was storming to the Republican nomination and was favorite to win the coming election. The contract granted Kushner’s firm a 99-year lease over the General Staff site free of charge. Kushner, whose spokesperson said he had been looking at the project since 2021, posted an image of the design on X, professing himself excited. Aleksandar Jovanović Ćuta, an environmental activist who revealed the agreement, remarked that Serbia is not a buffet and Vučić is not a waiter. A subsequent contract signed on May 13, 2024, explicitly committed the Serbian authorities to removing the site’s cultural heritage designation to the satisfaction of Kushner’s company.
When heritage officials again refused to initiate the removal procedure during a subsequent meeting led by finance minister Siniša Mali, the administration’s ultimatum led to the resignations of Đukanović and Belgrade’s top heritage official, Olivera Vučković. In her resignation letter, Đukanović wrote that she could not agree to inappropriate interventions that would permanently destroy the complex’s values. Little was heard of the project for months until November, when Trump defeated Kamala Harris to win re-election, and Vučić’s government announced the site had been stripped of its protection. While criminal charges of abuse of public office were brought against senior regime figures last December—including Vučić’s culture minister Nikola Selaković—the Guardian investigation indicates that prosecutors have not publicly detailed Vučić’s initial direct involvement in the meetings, though a spokesperson confirmed prosecutors possess evidence regarding the February 2024 presidential meeting.
Political Stakes and International Context
The controversy unfolds against the backdrop of a high-stakes parliamentary election scheduled for October 25, as Vučić seeks to extend his rule amid mass anti-corruption protests. Following Donald Trump’s re-election, Eric Trump confirmed that the Belgrade venture would bear the Trump brand, marking the family’s first joint real estate project with Kushner. Critics have characterized the arrangement as part of a broader pattern of global business deals intersecting with US foreign policy, noting similar fast-tracked developments and investments in places like Vietnam and Saudi Arabia alongside concurrent US policy decisions. Representatives for the Trump and Kushner families have denied any involvement in removing the site’s protected status or engaging in pay-to-play schemes, with Kushner’s spokesperson calling the project an opportunity to transform a painful site into a symbol of healing while maintaining that Kushner had no involvement in internal Serbian governmental processes. Vučić did not respond to requests for comment regarding his role in the meetings.
The political fallout has intensified within Serbia, where the collapse of a canopy at the Novi Sad railway station killed 16 people and triggered rolling protests against graft with the student slogan “Serbia or mafia.” Following the protests and the subsequent indictment of officials—including the arrest of Goran Vasić, who had replaced Đukanović and allegedly forged a supportive expert opinion—Kushner’s company announced in December 2025 that the project would not proceed at that time. Vučić responded angrily, calling prosecutors corrupt gangs who fabricated cases and threatening reprisals, while prosecutors maintained they are continuing pretrial proceedings to determine the potential criminal liability of other persons as well.