Jared Kushner's company, the son-in-law of former US President Donald Trump, will lease the area of the bombed General Staff in Belgrade for 99 years, free of charge, and will build a luxury hotel and apartment complex, as well as a memorial and a museum on that site, the New York Times writes. and transmitted by N1.
The investment, as stated, is worth 500 million dollars, and the state of Serbia, according to the contract proposal, should receive 22 percent of the profit.
New York Times writes that the arrangement for the area of the bombed General Staff, which the "Kushner" company will make with the Government of Serbia, follows Donald Trump's earlier interest in that location. The former US president, the American newspaper reminds, was interested in the same location before he was elected to office, and the mediator in the negotiations was the same man who now works with Jared Kushner.
According to the memorandum between Kushner's team and the Government of Serbia, the area where the complex of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, i.e. the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense, which was bombed by NATO in 1999, is located, would be leased to Mr. Kushner's investment company for 99 years, free of charge. The New York Times.
According to the draft agreement, which was given to the American newspaper by a Serbian official, Kushner would have the right to build a luxury hotel and apartment complex, as well as a memorial and a museum, on the site of the General Staff.
The New York Times, however, recalls that in 2013, two years before he ran for president of the USA, Kushner's father-in-law Donald Trump, in a conversation with a high official of the Serbian government, expressed his desire to build a luxury hotel on the site of the General Staff.
Then representatives of the Trump organization traveled to Belgrade to see the location, but the project was not realized before the election of Trump as president of the USA, when he took an oath stating, among other things, that he would not enter into any new deals with foreign countries.
Richard Grenell, whom Trump once appointed as a special envoy for the Balkans, during the former president's mandate encouraged a plan for Serbia and the United States to jointly revitalize the former location of the General Staff. Grenell advocated the use of American investments for the transformation of the location in the center of Belgrade, at a time when he was still an official diplomat of the American government in 2020, transcripts and recordings of several press conferences of the Government of Serbia show.
Jared Kushner said in an interview on Sunday that he had never discussed the Belgrade project with Trump and that he was not aware of his father-in-law's earlier interest in developing the location of the former General Staff.
"I had no idea my father-in-law was interested in that region, and I doubt he has any knowledge of this deal we're working on," Mr. Kushner said.
Trump's representatives did not respond to multiple requests from The New York Times for comment on Jared Kushner's current affairs or his previous interest in the Belgrade location.
Grenell, on the other hand, stated that he had no knowledge of Trump's interest in the location in Belgrade before his presidency. But Grenell is now working with Mr Kushner on a new development deal and, according to Mr Trump's son-in-law, he was the main force behind his decision to consider an investment in Belgrade.
In his role as a special envoy during the last two years of the Trump administration, Mr. Grenell helped spur economic reconciliation talks between Serbia and Kosovo. The connection between Grenell's role in the effort to revitalize the Belgrade site while he was part of the US administration, and now that he is out of it and helping Kushner, opens new questions about the conflict of interest between their public and private roles, according to the American paper.
Kushner confirmed on Friday that his investment firm is conducting business in Serbia, as well as luxury real estate projects in Albania, and that he expects those agreements to be finalized soon.
The overlap between the government affairs that Kushner and Grenell performed while they were part of the US administration, and the business deals they carry out in the regions where they served, resembles the deals that Kushner and former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made in the Middle East after leaving office.
Namely, both Mnuchin and Kushner were active in diplomacy in the Middle East, and they founded investment firms after leaving the Trump administration, which at the time provided billions of dollars from the Saudi government and hundreds of millions of dollars from other Middle Eastern countries.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who specializes in the ethics of government, told the New York Times that Kushner's project in Serbia would represent a conflict of interest if Trump was re-elected as US president in the November elections.
"The concern lies in the fact that the Government of Serbia could try to influence the future President Trump by doing business with the President's family. "Foreign policy towards Serbia should be influenced by what is in the interest of the United States, and not by any financial favors coming from the Serbian government," Clark pointed out.
Grenel close to the Serbian authorities, sang in the club with Siniša Mali
Grenel's proposal from 2020 on the reconstruction of the bombed General Staff complex followed, according to Serbian Government officials, right after Trump hosted Aleksandar Vučić, the President of Serbia, at the White House when the so-called Washington agreement with Belgrade and Pristina.
“From the very beginning, what Trump has said is: Let's give them a little taste of the Trump economy. Let's show them how to develop the economy, how to take over industries and develop them," Grenell said on the occasion.
During 2018 and 2019, while serving as ambassador to Germany, Grenell told trusted aides that he wanted to be secretary of state in Trump's second term. With his caustic style of diplomacy, he alienated the highest officials in the German government, but he began to cultivate other relationships throughout Europe, including those with Vučić, the New York Times recalls.
While he was ambassador to Germany, Grenell proposed to Trump the idea of appointing him as a mediator in the long-term conflict between Serbia and Kosovo, according to two former officials of the Trump administration.
25 years ago, NATO forces, led by the US, intervened militarily to protect Kosovo Albanians from Slobodan Milosevic's forces, according to the Times. The former General Staff of the Yugoslav Army in the center of Belgrade, although largely unused at the time, was one of the targets. The building has been in ruins ever since and the Serbs, according to the American newspaper, see it as a symbol of their suffering during the NATO bombing.
In 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, which does not officially recognize Kosovo as a sovereign country.
In October 2019, Mr. Trump appointed Grenell as his "Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia-Kosovo Peace Negotiations."
Grenell was seen among European diplomats as someone who favors the Serbian side in the negotiations, and he was warmly received in Belgrade. He exerted enormous pressure on Kosovo Prime Minister Aljbin Kurti to lift tariffs on Serbian products, and prominent Trump allies began publicly calling for the withdrawal of US peacekeeping forces from Kosovo. Grenell had one important ally in Kosovo, the then president Hashim Thaci, who was later accused of war crimes.
Grenell rejected any suggestion that he was biased. He said he was eventually thanked by the leaders of both nations — Vučić in Serbia and Thaci in Kosovo — for his role in helping broker an economic normalization agreement.
But he admitted that during the Trump administration, he made special progress in strengthening economic ties between the United States and Serbia.
"I have developed a great love for advancing Serbian-American relations," Grenell said in an interview with The Times on Sunday.
During his time as envoy to the Balkans, Grenell developed friendships with top Serbian officials, including Vučić and Serbian Finance Minister Siniša Mali, who officials in Belgrade said played an important role in Kushner's General Staff project. Mali did not respond to The Times' requests for comment.
In 2021, Grenel posted a video of him and Mali singing in a crowded Belgrade club on his Instagram page.
Grenell returned to Serbia and neighboring Albania shortly after Trump left the White House to begin promoting Mr. Kushner's company's development projects, including one in Belgrade.
The value of the project is half a billion dollars, the state of Serbia 22 percent of the profit
A draft agreement provided to The Times by a Serbian government official also spells out the option of a formal free transfer of ownership of the property to Mr. Kushner's company, after construction of the hotel complex and luxury residential units.
In a statement to the American media, Kushner did not dispute the veracity of the document obtained by The Times. He revealed that the parties have provisionally agreed to give the Government of Serbia 22 percent of the realized profit from the project, the value of which is around 500 million dollars.
Mr. Kushner's company, Affinity Partners, announced that the site in Belgrade will be "turned into a world-class luxury hotel," including a museum and memorial designed by Serbian architects, to honor him. the importance of the location in recent Serbian history.
Kushner admitted that Grenell encouraged him to continue with this project.
"Rick (Richard Grenell) is a big proponent of investing in the Balkans and has been trying to get me to invest in this project since I started my fund," Kushner said, noting that the American company will build on a site that has been bombed by NATO in the past.
Representatives of the Government of Serbia did not immediately respond to questions and multiple requests for comment from The New York Times.
For the Serbs, a monument of suffering, for Grenel, an opportunity to heal the wounds
Danijela Nestorovic, a member of the opposition Ecological Uprising in the Serbian Parliament, and other members of her organization condemned the proposed Kushner deal in a statement to The Times, noting that several people were killed and 40 wounded in the NATO bombing.
"The General Staff building is a monument for us. It evokes deep, hidden emotions in the victims of NATO bombing. Building a hotel there would be a mockery of the citizens of Serbia," said Nestorović.
Grenell said in an interview that a deal with Kushner would represent an opportunity to "turn a symbol of past conflict into a bridge of friendship and renewal" and "symbolize the enormous progress that has been made in healing the wounds of the past."
In 2020, when Mr. Grenell encouraged Serbian officials to consider cooperation with American investors on the redevelopment of the site of the former General Staff, Ivica Dacic, who was then Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Government of Serbia, recalled his visit to Trump Tower in New York in 2013. That's when Mr. Trump discussed the hotel project at the mentioned location for the first time.
"I don't think he has forgotten that desire," Dacic said at a press conference in 2020, referring to Trump.
Kushner says that everything must be clean and according to the law
The proposed project in Serbia is only one of three jobs that Kushner and Grenell are trying to develop in the Balkans.
Kushner said on Friday that the final contracts have not been signed, but that the negotiations have progressed and that he hopes they will be finalized. He disputed any suggestion that his company was getting special treatment.
He also said he knows how sensitive his position is because he is married to Trump's older daughter, Ivanka, and has played a prominent role in the Trump administration, so he says he had no choice but to be careful, to follow the law , and to respect ethical boundaries.
"Everything has to be completely clean," said Jared Kushner.
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