In Trump’s footsteps: Jared Kushner seeks big Balkans deal

ROB MUDGE

One of Jared Kushner’s planned ventures in the Balkans concerns the redevelopment of a site in Serbia’s capital Belgrade. Two years before Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he put his feelers out, telling Serbian authorities that he was interested in building a luxury hotel and apartment complex on the site of the former headquarters of the Yugoslav army, the General Staff building, destroyed in 1999 by NATO’s bombing campaigns.

Although that project fell through, Kushner, who was a senior White House official during Trump’s tenure, has now reportedly reached a tentative arrangement with the Serbian government to forge ahead with the development project. According to the New York Times, which received a draft outline, the agreement, with a 99-year lease at no charge, would allow Kushner to build a luxury hotel, residential units, shops and a museum on the site. The funding for the project, amounting to around $500 million, is expected to come from Kushner’s investment firm, Miami-based Affinity Partners, which he set up after leaving the White House. And he doesn’t appear to be short of funds. Since then, it’s estimated that he has secured $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, while sovereign wealth funds in the UAE and Qatar have plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into his firm.

Neither Affinity Partners nor Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund responded to DW’s request for comment. Kushner said recently that the negotiating parties had tentatively agreed to give the Serbian government 22% of the profits generated by the project.

President Aleksandar Vucic and his government argue that Belgrade must develop further and create business opportunities. Milan Kovacevic, an economist and investment consultant, concurs that the city needs new capacities to accommodate the growth in population and tourism.

“Belgrade definitely needs hotels, including those of high quality, but they should be urbanistically positioned and built where they are needed,” he told DW. He also cautioned that “there should be a market” for an open and transparent bidding process. By giving exclusive bragging rights to just one investor, in this case, Jared Kushner, “too much is left to corruption and arbitrariness,” said Kovacevic.

In contrast, opposition politicians and experts are bemused by the interest in the development plans and even describe it as a scandal that must be prevented. “Serbia is not a buffet, and Vucic is not a waiter. This is not his private property,” said Aleksandar Jovanovic Cuta, leader of the movement Ecological Uprising. “The same thing is happening with our natural resources, rivers, forests, minerals. Vucic is giving away everything of value without informing the people about the contracts and the benefit for the citizens of Serbia,” he told DW.

Dorde Bobic, who was Belgrade’s chief city architect two decades ago, is appalled by the planned projects. He says it smacks of arrogance to simply demolish the former General Staff headquarters to build some hotels, and “give away the most precious place” in the city to the “foreign force” that bombed Belgrade in 1999, and to “trade it for political or personal interests.”

Kushner recently announced on his social media platforms that he was “excited to share early design images for development projects that have been created for the Albanian coast.” Prime Minister Edi Rama said his country was proud to welcome the projects.