WASHINGTON — Over the past year, the Trump family has zoomed around the world signing one new real estate development after another, often involving foreign governments, raising a litany of ethical concerns.

But only one of those has led to a publicly announced criminal investigation of local officials. And the inquiry came after a plucky group of cultural preservationists in Serbia stood up to their own government and, by extension, the close relatives of the powerful U.S. president.

President Donald 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.

In November, one week after Trump won reelection, the Serbian government greased the skids by declaring that the site — a bombed-out building that serves as an icon to Serbians’ suffering during a 1999 conflict — was no longer considered a culturally protected asset. That paved the way for the Trump family project.

Dozens of architects and cultural historians at the state-run Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments cried foul, accusing the government of violating the law. Several days after the government’s decision, they fired off a letter saying the property’s status as an “immovable cultural property” could be revoked only if a team of the institute’s experts approved it. And they hadn’t.

“From the beginning, we knew it was a political decision,” said Estela Radonjic Zivkov, the institute’s former deputy director. She said she was pressured by state intelligence officers not to challenge the government on this case, a clear sign of Serbian leaders’ intense interest in the project. She did so anyway.

Now, seven months later, the Trump family project has become both a Serbian scandal and a glaring example of just how far a foreign government was willing to go to further the financial interests of Trump’s family. And it underscores recurring concerns that the family’s business dealings have become harder to separate from Trump’s official decisions.

Serbian college students who have been leading mass protests against Aleksandar Vucic, the country’s strongman president, have seized on the development as an example of what they see as their government’s corrupt ways. In late March, thousands demonstrated at the site.

Last month, they and other critics celebrated a surprise victory.

Serbia’s organized crime prosecutor charged Goran Vasic, Zivkov’s boss and the director of the cultural institute, with abuse of power. The prosecutor’s office said Vasic had admitted falsifying a document to justify stripping the site of its protected status.

No one knows how far the inquiry will go. But one question that has been publicly raised is whether Sinisa Mali, Serbia’s powerful finance minister, pressured cultural heritage officials to either back the project or resign. Mali has ties to the White House through Richard Grenell, a longtime Trump ally and the current envoy for special missions.

Mali has declined to comment on the project, citing the continuing investigation. Affinity Partners, Kushner’s company, says the deal is under review. Vucic has minimized the criminal inquiry, saying that “there was not any kind of forgery.”

A Choice Location

The Trump family’s plan calls for a hotel and apartment towers on a piece of prime real estate, across the street from the government’s ornate headquarters in downtown Belgrade.

It would replace the ruins of what is known as the General Staff building, part of a military complex that was heavily damaged by NATO bombs in 1999. It was declared a protected cultural asset six years later.

Vujo Ilic, a political scientist at the University of Belgrade, said Vucic “has a political interest to have this project developed in order to get some more access to Trump’s administration.”

Faced with the ouster of his prime minister in March and calls for special elections, Vucic is eager to demonstrate that he has credibility with world leaders, Ilic said. Other bilateral issues are also at play, including U.S. tariffs and support for Serbia’s bid to join the European Union.

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, has said that “everything President Trump does is to benefit the American people.” Vucic’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but the Serbian leader said last year that he “died laughing” at the notion that “I used this for political influence on Trump.”

As far back as 2013, Donald Trump was eyeballing the Belgrade site for a hotel. The idea arose again in his first term as president. Grenell, who then was Trump’s troubleshooter for the fractious relationship between Serbia and Kosovo, encouraged Serbian leaders to consider redeveloping the site with American investment.

After Trump lost reelection in 2020, Grenell urged Kushner to take up the project and served as an early intermediary. Grenell met with the Serbian president in 2022 and 2023 and posted images of himself on social media with Mali in 2021.

In one, Grenell’s arm was slung around Mali’s shoulders with this caption: “Always a good time with @mali_sinisa#belgrade.” A video showed the two men singing in unison at a raucous evening party at a packed Belgrade club. Grenell could not be reached for comment.

By May 2024, the Serbian government struck a deal with a company affiliated with Kushner.

It agreed to give the developers a 99-year, no-cost lease that could be converted to ownership, also free of charge, according to a draft agreement reviewed by The New York Times. In return for contributing the land, the Serbian government will receive 22% of the development’s profits, according to people familiar with the deal.

A Serbian minister publicly thanked Mali for “the energy and effort he has invested” in the project.

An Early-Morning Call

There was a hitch: The Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments wasn’t going along. Dubravka Djukanovic, an architect and college professor who led the institute, was opposed to changing the site’s protected status.

In an interview, she said the complex, which was designed by a renowned Serbian modernist architect, should instead be restored and put to public use.

Last June, she said, she was summoned to a meeting with Mali. Olivera Vuckovic, director of a parallel city institute, was also summoned, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of job repercussions.

Mali had a blunt message, that person said: Get behind the project or resign.

Djukanovic said she swiftly resigned because of the meeting with Mali, but she declined to give further details because of the investigation. Vuckovic could not be reached for comment.

The issue simmered for another six months, until after Trump won reelection. On Nov. 14, the Serbian government announced it had revoked the site’s protected status.

At the cultural institute, Zivkov, then the deputy director, said the staff immediately got to work on a letter saying that the government had “grossly violated the Law on Cultural Heritage.” If the government trampled its own law in this case, the letter said, “any cultural property that inconveniences an investor or poses a political or other obstacle may be erased in the same way.”

As she was getting ready for work at 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 18, Zivkov said, she got a call from officers of the Security Information Agency, the state’s intelligence and national security arm. They were at the institute waiting for her.

In two follow-up phone calls, she said, they “strongly advised” her to back off. Undaunted, she sent off the letter — signed, she said, by every one of the institute’s 50 or so experts — to the government and the Ministry of Culture.

It is unclear whether it was the letter from the institute’s staff that prompted the criminal investigation. The institute’s director was temporarily detained for questioning, then charged with abuse of power in mid-May. He has not yet appeared in court. Ian Brekke, the top lawyer for Affinity Partners, flew to Belgrade right after that news broke, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential business matters. Serbian officials told him the controversy boiled down to a simple administrative error, the person said, but Kushner’s team is still assessing the situation.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor’s inquiry has moved forward. Zivkov, now a principal conservator at the institute, said she was interviewed at the end of May.

According to the prosecutor’s office, there are 34 other names on their list for questioning.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Sharon LaFraniere and Pavle Kosic/Vladimir Zivojinovic
c. 2025 The New York Times Company