Jared Kushner Abandons Serbia Lightning Rod Hotel Project

The Trump Tower project in Belgrade went bust after more scandals at the bombed-out Serbian site.

Jared Kushner’s Affinity Brothers dropped out of the hotel project on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The decision came shortly after a Serbian special prosecutor indicted a cabinet minister and three officials.

The indictments were for abuse of position and falsifying documents. The president of Serbia promised pardons for those indicted who were connected to the project, but the noise surrounding the project was getting to be too much to handle.

“Because 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,” said an Affinity spokesperson.

Affinity laid out plans last spring for a Trump-branded two-skyscraper project with 175 hotel rooms and 1,500 luxury apartments.

The development site is the former headquarters of Yugoslavia’s army, destroyed by NATO bombing before the turn of the century. It was given a protected status in 2005, which Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić vehemently opposed.

Vučić got the site’s protected status removed last year when Affinity signed a 99-year lease for the site.

The development was hit with another hurdle when Goran Vasic, the acting director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, allegedly confessed to forging a document that allowed for the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense headquarters in Belgrade to be demolished.

Then last month, lawmakers in the European country’s ruling party voted to designate the redevelopment of the Belgrade site in question as a priority, allowing the site to be rapidly cleared in anticipation of the $500 million project.

Critics of the development alleged a sweetheart deal for Kushner and Donald Trump; this was the first official collaboration between the Trump Organization and Affinity.

Vučić has also been dealing with mass protests after a railway station canopy collapsed, killing more than a dozen people. Student protesters promised to occupy the development site if the Trump Tower project continued.

— Holden Walter-Warner