The $ 500 million luxury hotel project of the Trump family in Serbia, planned to be built on the site of a bombed building of the Ministry of Defense, has come across an embarrassing complication. An important document on which the Serbian government has trusted to close this deal was forged, officials said this week.
Jared Kushner, the son -in -law of President Trump, and his business partners are planning to build a luxury residential and commercial complex on the site of the long -term compound that is planned to include a Trump International Hotel, the first in Europe.
The leader of the Serbian agency charged with protecting cultural monuments that were admitted to the authorities that he had forged a government document that the former Headquarters of Yugoslavian Ministry of Defense in Belgrade in Belgrade to be demolished and replaced by the Trump Hotel.
The project won preliminary approval of the Serbian government last year, even before the government officially moved to withdraw the protected historical status of the former complex of the Ministry of Defense, which was severely damaged during a 1999 bomb campaign by the North -Atlantic Convention Organization.
Serbian government officials say that the desk leader, Goran Vasic, has manufactured an expert opinion to justify the government’s decision to strip the site of its cultural heritage status.
“Vasic has forged a proposal for a decision to withdraw the status of cultural ownership,” said the office of the public prosecutor for organized crime in a statement.
The forged document served as a legal basis for lifting protection against the complex. Mr Vasic is now confronted with accusations of office and forgery of official documents, said officials in Belgrade this week.
Affinity Partners, Mr Kushner’s company, said in a statement that it had not played a role in the assessment of the cultural status of the site. The work on the site has not started yet and the fate of the project is now less clear, the company said.
“Today we learned from media reports that a former Serbian government official reportedly falsified forged documents with regard to the historical designation of the Belgrade Square project has been falsified,” said the statement. “We will assess this issue and determine the following steps.”
In Serbia, the prospect that the historic complex would be demolished and replaced by a luxury hotel that would benefit the US president.
Opposition leaders in the parliament of Serbia point out the recognition that the document has been forged as proof that the Trump and Kushner family businesses have concluded a special deal.
“This was all to make room for the Trumps,” said Dragan Jonic, a legislator who helped to lead the project protests.
The country on the site is planned to be rented for 99 years to Mr Kushner and his partners, under the conditions of the provisional agreement. It is planned to be the first joint project of the Kushner and Trump families.
“Serbia is one of the fastest growing countries in Europe, and we are incredibly honored to be there,” said Eric Trump, the son of the president, in an interview in January, adding that “it will be fun to bring the family together.”
Various protests have been held in Belgrade against the demolition of the site. The most recent took place in March, at the 26 -year anniversary of NATO bombing.
The protests on the project site are only part of national student demonstrations against the president of Serbia and his government. They started in November after a concrete canopy collapsed at the train station in Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia, killing 16 people. Students and opposition politicians have blamed the collapse of the sloppy work by contractors connected to corrupt officials.
Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of President Trump, has visited Serbia twice in recent months to show his support to President Aleksandar Vucic, whose administration moved quickly to approve the hotel project of Trump and Kushner families. These visits have contributed to strengthening the status of Mr. Vucic in the midst of the calls of the protesters for his resignation.
The project in Serbia is one of the various recent Trump family -deals involved in foreign governments. Others include an obligation of $ 2 billion from United Arab Emirates to a cryptocurrency company from Trump and luxury real estate projects in Qatar and Oman.
Ethical lawyers, including lawyers who served in the White House for Republican and Democratic administrations, said that the involvement of foreign governments in such real estate and cryptocurrency -deals creates an appearance of corruption, or at least special treatment for the president’s family.
“This gives the impression, if not the reality that our foreign policy of the United States is influenced by the President’s President’s business interest and the President’s family,” said Richard Painter, who served as the most important Ethics lawyer of the White House for President George W. Bush. “It is extremely dangerous to have a president with far -reaching business interests around the world.”
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