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A Trump-style tower in Belgrade? Serbs say it reopens the wounds of war

Politiko 2024-04-29 16:09:45

For many Serbs, it is as if the Taliban wanted to build a luxury apartment complex on the site of New York's Twin Towers. This is how the news about a redevelopment project proposed by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the former US president, Donald Trump, and Richard Grenell, a key ally of Trump, in some neighborhoods of Belgrade, reports "Politico".

The plan involves demolishing the bombed headquarters of the former Yugoslav army, which until now had been left largely undeveloped as an unofficial memorial to the bombings that hit Belgrade in 1999. A luxury apartment and office complex will now be erected in its place. Trump Tower style.

"It is insulting that the place where people were killed and bombed should be turned into a place with jacuzzis and casinos," said Aleksandar Jovanović Ćuta, an opposition politician who first published a leak describing the plan.
According to documents leaked to Jovanović, negotiations have been ongoing since at least 2022. Under the terms of the proposed deal, the Serbian infrastructure ministry would grant a 99-year permit for two parcels of land that housed Kushner Realty and Atlantic Incubation headquarters. Partners, a company registered in Delaware last year.

Kushner confirmed the news by sharing digital projections of development plans on the X platform, which also include projects in Albania. "Excited to share some early design images," Kushner wrote on the social media site, sharing a photo of the two illuminated towers with Belgrade in the background. For many Serbs, the ruins evoke the NATO bombing campaign in which the US and its allies targeted strategic military and political facilities in Serbia in an attempt to curb Slobodan Milosevic's campaigns of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

The multi-story ruins are located at a key intersection in the city center. The buildings have been left untouched for decades to witness the past. Rumors about the Trump family's interest in the country date back to 2013, when then-Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said that the former US president, then a real estate mogul and TV star, was interested in building a luxury hotel on the site.

Grenell, who served as ambassador to Germany, also proposed developing the location in 2020 as his boss prepared to run for re-election. The latest proposal became public after Jovanovic released leaked documents showing that the government had authorized Infrastructure Minister Goran Vesic to sign an investment contract with Kushner's company, Atlantic Incubations LLC. A previous memorandum of understanding was signed in December 2022 with an "affiliated company of Kushner Realty."

Jovanovic and other opposition figures have launched a petition against the project, gathering nearly 22,000 signatures, and have warned of protests to prevent the project from happening.