Kushner’s company: Fate of project at General Staff complex site now less clear

“Today, we learned from media reports that a former Serbian government official with no connection to our firm allegedly falsified documents related to the landmark designation of the Belgrade Square project. We will review this matter and determine next steps,” the company told The New York Times, Danas reported.

The New York Times says that the Trump family’s $500 million luxury hotel project in Serbia, slated to be built on the site of a bombed-out Defence Ministry building, has run into an embarrassing complication.

A key document the Serbian government has relied on to deliver this deal was forged, officials there said this week, reported the American daily.

Jared Kushner and his business partners plan to build a luxury residential and commercial complex on the site of the long-vacant compound that is slated to include a Trump International Hotel, the first in Europe, writes The New York Times.

The American daily said the head of the Serbian agency charged with protecting cultural monuments admitted to the authorities that he had forged a government document allowing the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense headquarters in Belgrade to be demolished and replaced with the Trump hotel.

The project won tentative approval from the Serbian government last year, even before the government officially moved to revoke the protected historic status of the former Defence Ministry complex, which was heavily damaged during a 1999 bombing campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the daily said.

The New York Times noted that the prospect that the historic complex would be demolished and replaced with a luxury hotel benefiting the American president has spurred outrage in Serbia.