Former Army Headquarters Complex (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)
Jared Kushner, an American businessman and investor and the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, has pulled out of a planned Trump-branded project in Belgrade, involving redevelopment of the Army General Staff (Generalstab) in the city center, after the project sparked protests and “the indictment of a senior Serbian politician,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Dec. 15.
“…we are withdrawing our application and are at the moment pulling out of the project,” a spokesperson for Affinity Partners, an American investment firm founded by Kushner, has said, according to the newspaper
The WSJ wrote that “the deal to redevelop site in downtown Belgrade bombed by NATO had become a quagmire for U.S. president’s son-in-law.”
The newspaper further reported that on Dec. 15, a special prosecutor had indicted a cabinet minister and three other officials over the project, a planned trio of towers in a central Belgrade site bombed by NATO in 1999/.
The Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime, known by the local acronym TOK, filed an indictment proposal on Dec. 15 against Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic and three other people over their unlawful actions involved in the removal of cultural heritage status from the Army General Staff buildings in downtown Belgrade.
The Office said in a press release that the indictment proposal also included the Ministry’s secretary, Slavica Jelaca, acting director of the National Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments Goran Vasic and his peer at the Belgrade City Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Aleksandar Ivanovic.
They are suspected of having abused their official positions and forged the documents used to strip the Generalstab building in central Belgrade of its status as a cultural monument, in order for the land area to be leased long-term, or sold, to a U.S. investor.
TOK also said it was continuing the investigation in the case in order to determine if other individuals may have been involved in the criminal offense.
Serbian Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic on Dec. 15 said that he was “looking forward to the trial, because it will mark the end of the blockaders.”
In an appearance on TV Informer, he accused the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime of being part of a criminal organization which allegedly includes certain media outlets and an unnamed subsection of the opposition, and said that “the true target is President Aleksandar Vucic, who poses the major threat to them.”
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