Law in favor of a real estate project of Trump's son-in-law, passed in the Parliament of Serbia

On Tuesday, the Serbian Parliament adopted a special law that would allow the acceleration of the demolition of the former headquarters of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, located in the very center of Belgrade, a land on which Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the American President Donald Trump, intends to build a luxury hotel, reports AFP on Friday, taken over by Agerpres.

The subject is a sensitive one in Serbia, as it is a building that was bombed several times in 1999 in the US-led NATO air campaign to end the war in Kosovo.

The headquarters of the General Staff in the center of the capital was never rebuilt. Badly damaged by bombing, the building, built in 1965, was declared a protected “cultural asset” by the Serbian government in 2005. It is adjacent to the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Jared Kushner's company Affinity Partners – welcomed several times to Serbia by President Aleksandar Vucic – last year signed a 99-year lease with the Serbian government to redevelop the site, which had just been revoked as a “cultural asset”.

But the project was suspended in May due to suspicions that documents used to raise this status were falsified. An investigation is still ongoing. This did not prevent the deputies of the majority to adopt, with a vote of 130-40, a special law by which the redevelopment is declared urgent, which obliges the administration to quickly release the authorizations.

The second partner in the project is the real estate developer Eagle Hills from the United Arab Emirates, which was involved in a controversial project to redevelop a large part of the banks of the Sava River, a tributary of the Danube, a project that raised public opposition in 2016.

The adoption of the law was preceded by stormy debates in the parliament, with the majority deputies stating that the opposition wants to damage “good relations with the United States”. “The headquarters of the General Staff has been bombed and left in ruins for 26 years,” said Miljenko Jovanov, a deputy of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of President Vucic, stating that he supports “good relations with the US that many are trying to compromise.”

In a press conference in front of the building in question, several experts and architects called for its preservation, “a unique architectural masterpiece”, according to Miljan Salata, a member of the Association of Architects of Serbia. “This building is safe, rebuildable and should remain accessible to the public as a memorial to the victims of NATO bombing,” he added.

The law “sets a dangerous precedent” by which any cultural monument could be sold and demolished, warned Estela Radonjic Zivkov, from the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments.