Serbian Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic. Photo: EPA/KATIA CHRISTODOULOU
Minister of Culture Nikola Selakovic arrived for questioning by Serbian prosecutors on Thursday over his alleged role in an attempt to remove the designation of the former Yugoslav Army HQ in Belgrade as a cultural asset so it can be demolished.
Selakovic is one of the suspects in the case related to the forgery of documents that would have enabled the building, a protected cultural asset, to be knocked down. He denies wrongdoing.
The lifting of the former army HQ’s cultural asset protection is needed to allow the demolition of the former army general staff building to make way for a new investment project, believed to be a Donald Trump-style tower. The new project is linked to an investment firm owned by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
According to case files reviewed by BIRN, some of those who have been interviewed by prosecutors accused Selakovic of putting pressure on experts at the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments to fall into line.
But Selakovic said on Tuesday that it is the prosecutors who are involved in crime and “wait for a call from abroad” so they can be told whom they should prosecute.
“They lie in everything they do, and they also lie when they say that I did not respond or react to their summons,” he said. “I’m telling you, we will go after them, we will judge them,” he added.
The head of the governing Serbian Progressive Party, former Prime Minister Milos Vucevic, gave his “full support” to Selakovic in a statement on X. Vucevic described the case as an “orchestrated hunt for a man who serves his people and his homeland, Serbia”.
Prosecutors said Selakovic did not appear for initial scheduled questioning on November 28, “and did not justify his absence”. However, he arrived to be quizzed on Thursday.
In November, the Serbian parliament adopted a so-called lex specialis – a special law governing the redevelopment of the former Yugoslav Army General Staff headquarters in Belgrade, a landmark socialist-era building that was partly destroyed by the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Despite the special law, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments has yet to delete the Army HQ from its register of protected cultural monuments.
Meanwhile the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime claimed on November 25 that it has been put under pressure over this case and others by public statements by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and other officials, including “representatives of the legislative and executive branches, other actors in political life and certain media outlets”.
The Prosecutor’s Office said pressure had increased after it launched a pre-investigation procedure regarding the deadly canopy collapse at Novi Sad railway station last year, and after the case regarding the Yugoslav Army HQ.
“When evidence was collected on the existence of a reasonable suspicion that certain ministers in the government of the Republic of Serbia abused their position to the detriment of all citizens, the media began targeting this prosecutor’s office first, and then obstructing the actions of this prosecutor’s office,” it said.
Earlier this year, the Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into claims that the acting director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Goran Vasic, had forged documentation in an attempt to strip the building of protection as a cultural asset.
Vasic, who was appointed after the previous director resigned in June last year rather than lift the protection, was arrested and subsequently released. He has admitted guilt, but so far, he has not been charged.
Selakovic, a veteran member of the Serbian Progressive Party, has been a senior state official since the party came to power in 2012. He was justice minister, secretary general in the Serbian president’s office, foreign affairs minister and labour minister before he was appointed as culture minister in 2024.