Law passed allowing Trump's son-in-law luxury construction in Belgrade center

(Patria) - The Serbian Assembly yesterday adopted a special law allowing the demolition of an architectural monument damaged by NATO missiles in 1999, thus revoking its cultural heritage protection and paving the way for the family of US President Donald Trump to build a luxury business and hotel complex on the site.

The Serbian authorities have been trying for a long time to legally regulate the area of the semi-demolished former General Staff building, bombed twice during the NATO air strikes on the then FRY in 1999, in order to enable Trump's son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner to build on the ruins of the former military headquarters.

Kushner himself confirmed this with a statement to The New York Times (NYT) in March last year about the planned investment in luxury real estate in Serbia, as well as in Albania.

According to the NYT of March 18, the investment is worth 500 million dollars, and Kushner's company is expected to lease the bombed headquarters area of approximately 1,500 square meters for 99 years free of charge, with the Serbian state collecting 22 percent of the profit.

Part of the complex is also planned to include a memorial section dedicated to the victims of the 1999 NATO bombing.

The opposition, civil society, and the expert public in Belgrade - especially architects and urban planners - have been pointing out for years that the authorities are resorting to non-transparent "investor urbanism" projects that seriously disrupt urban ensembles, benefiting foreign companies and domestic tycoons.

The Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime in Belgrade announced earlier that the director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Goran Vasić, admitted to falsifying documents due to which the currently semi-demolished complex lost its status as a protected cultural monument.

Based on that documentation, an initiative was submitted to the Ministry of Culture to adopt a decision on the termination of its cultural heritage status, and the Serbian Government made that decision in November 2024.

The General Staff building by architect Nikola Dobrović, built from 1955 to 1965, was a symbol of the then Yugoslavia, then the seat of the Serbian Army leadership, and its status as a cultural monument was granted in 2005.

Architect Dobrović's complex, symbolizing the cascades of the Sutjeska river canyon, was one of the most significant objects of Yugoslav and Serbian architecture in the modernist style.

The adoption of the law in the Serbian parliament by the votes of the ruling coalition, led by the Serbian Progressive Party, was met with sharp opposition from the opposition, which points out that the Progressives illegally, with an unconstitutional law, voted to give the General Staff building to the Kushner family and that this is "an example of corruption and violation of the law".

- This act will have serious social consequences - warned the leader of the Kreni-promeni Movement, Savo Manojlović, and announced that he will ask the Constitutional Court to assess the constitutionality of the adopted law.