Just after President Donald Trump won the 2024 election, the Serbian government decided that a bombed-out former government building was no longer a "culturally protected asset." But when members of the state-run Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments cried foul, one leader got an ominous threat.
The building was "an icon to Serbians’ suffering during a 1999 conflict," the New York Times described. But the Trump family wanted it for a project.
"President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has a deal with the Serbian government to build a half-billion-dollar hotel and apartment complex in the center of the capital, Belgrade. The project also involves the Trump Organization, run by the president’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., as the luxury hotel will bear the Trump brand," the report said.
Estela Radonjic Zivkov, who was working as the deputy director of the institute, said, “From the beginning, we knew it was a political decision."
The institute, which comprises "dozens [of] architects and cultural historians," took issue with the new deal. Zivkov said that's when state intelligence officers pressured her not to challenge the case, because political leaders had an "intense interest in the project." But she ignored their warning.
There were two calls after that. "They 'strongly advised' her to back off," the Times reported.
"Undaunted, she sent off the letter — signed, she said, by every one of the institute’s 50-some experts — to the government and the Ministry of Culture," the report said. The letter told them that the government couldn't revoke the designation of the building as a cultural site unless their experts agreed to it.
Now, the report said, it has become the biggest scandal in Serbia, reaching all the way to the presidency.
The Times called it a "glaring example of just how far a foreign government was willing to go to further the financial interests of Mr. Trump’s family. And it underscores recurring concerns that the family’s business dealings have become harder to separate from Mr. Trump’s official decisions."
Zivkov’s boss, Goran Vasic, the director of the cultural institute, is now being hauled into court by the state's organized crime prosecutor. Prosecutors said he confessed to "falsifying a document to justify stripping the site of its protected status." Prosecutors have identified 34 other individuals they still wish to question regarding the matter.
Now, there are questions about whether Serbia's finance minister, Sinisa Mali, "pressured cultural heritage officials to either back the project or resign," the report stated. Mali has close ties to the White House through Trump ally Ric Grenell.
Mass protests have broken out against what the Times called "strongman president," Aleksandar Vucic, claiming that the development is an example of the government's corruption.
“Even the appearance that U.S. foreign policy might be getting harnessed for the president’s personal financial benefit flies in the face of how we have always understood public service,” Daniel I. Weiner, a government expert with the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, told the Times in an interview.
He noted that if foreign leaders think they can bribe Trump by "lining his family's pockets," U.S. foreign policy decisions could become completely distorted.
Zivkov is still working at the cultural institute, now as a principal conservator.
Mali refused to comment on the matter. Kushner's company claims that the project is still under review. President Vucic swears "there was not any kind of forgery."
