General Staff building in Belgrade, Photo: Reuters
Jared Kushner has withdrawn from the planned Trump Hotel construction project in Belgrade after the project sparked protests and an indictment against a senior Serbian politician, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
“Since significant projects should unite, not divide, and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the city of Belgrade, we are withdrawing our application and are withdrawing at this time,” said a spokesperson for Kouchner’s private investment firm, Affinity Partners, N1 reports.
Today, the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime filed an indictment against Minister Nikola Selaković and three others in the General Staff case.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime today filed an indictment against the Minister of Culture of Serbia, Nikola Selaković, Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Slavica Jelača, Acting Director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Goran Vasić, and Acting Director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade, Aleksandar Ivanović, in connection with the illegalities in removing the status of cultural property from the buildings of the ‘General Staff’,” the statement said.
The suspects, they add, are charged with committing two criminal offenses: abuse of official position and forgery of an official document.
Selaković was questioned as a suspect at the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office on December 4, when he presented his defense.
After the hearing, Selaković made a series of accusations against the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime to reporters. In his address, he called the Prosecutor’s Office an “autoimmune disease,” emphasizing that it is a “blockade criminal gang that has usurped part of the state and part of the state system.”
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