Money Grab/Give government contracts to family and donors
Kushner firm drops Belgrade hotel after officials indicted
In December 2025, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners withdrew from the Trump Tower Belgrade project. Serbian prosecutors had charged Nikola Selakovic, a close ally of the Serbian president, and three other officials with falsifying documents that cleared the project’s path.
What happened
Trump Tower Belgrade was to be a roughly $500 million hotel and residential complex on the former Yugoslav Army General Staff site, bombed by NATO in 1999. Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners backed it with Emirati developer Eagle Hills, and the Trump Organization branded it. Serbia granted a free 99-year lease. The site’s heritage protection had been removed on an expert opinion whose author was arrested in May 2025 for forging it.
On December 15, 2025, Serbia’s organized-crime prosecutor charged Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic, a close Vucic ally, with ordering the forgery. Goran Vasic, Aleksandar Ivanovic and Slavica Jelaca were charged with abuse of office and forgery. Within hours, Affinity Partners announced it was withdrawing “out of respect for the citizens of Serbia and the City of Belgrade,” without mentioning the charges.
Vucic said the project was dead, that Serbia had lost 1.5 billion euros, and threatened lawsuits. The trial opened February 4, 2026; prosecutors sought three years for Selakovic, who denies wrongdoing. No money changed hands in this record, which marks the end of a deal.
Who benefited
Nobody in this record came out ahead. Before the collapse, Affinity Partners and the Trump brand stood to profit from a free 99-year lease on a landmark site, approved by a foreign government while Kushner advised the president.
Who wanted something
Prosecutors say a sitting Serbian minister ordered officials to forge the document that cleared a project tied to the president’s son-in-law. The record does not say what the government’s inner circle expected in return. Vucic says the project was about rebuilding a ruin.
Who lost out
Serbia’s public saw officials in their government put on trial for forging documents to strip protection from a national landmark for a developer connected to the U.S. president. The president of Serbia says the country lost 1.5 billion euros when the developer walked away. No U.S. public money is in this record.
Why it matters
A deal that would have enriched the president’s son-in-law moved forward on documents a foreign government’s own prosecutors say were forged at a minister’s direction. Affinity withdrew within hours of the charges. The approvals rested on what prosecutors call fraud, and the exit came the day the fraud was charged.
Sources Radio Free Europe/Radio LibertyThe New York TimesEuropean Western BalkansAssociated Press (via Yahoo News)N1