Vučić personally led secret Belgrade scheme to hand protected site to Trump family, Guardian investigation finds

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The alleged scheme to override the protected status of a historic building in the Serbian capital looms over an election scheduled for 25 October. Composite: Guardian Design/PA/EPA/AP/Getty Images theguardian.com

Jared Kusher and the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, in Belgrade. Photograph: Instagram/Aleksandar Vucic theguardian.com

Screenshot from Trumpbelgrade.com showing the renderings of the proposed Belgrade development. Photograph: Trumpbelgrade.com theguardian.com

Aleksandar Vučić and Donald Trump Jr in Belgrade. Photograph: Facebook/Aleksandar Vucic theguardian.com

Serbian students and Belgrade residents hold a banner reading ‘We won’t give up the General Staff building’ in Belgrade in November 2025. Photograph: Andrej Isaković/AFP/Getty Images theguardian.com

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The Serbian president personally convened officials in his own offices to advance an allegedly illegal plan to strip a protected Belgrade building of its status and hand it to the Trump family, a Guardian investigation has found. The meeting, led by Aleksandar Vučić in February 2024, is not mentioned in the criminal indictment that followed — but it set in motion a scheme that ended with abuse-of-power charges against senior figures from his own government, including the culture minister.

The building at the centre of the affair is the former Yugoslav ministry of defence in central Belgrade, regarded as an architectural gem and an emblem of resistance to the Nazis before Nato bombs further marked it in 1999. Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr had been developing plans for a $500m hotel and residential tower on the site, part of the Trump family's global property expansion. According to the Guardian's account, drawing on interviews and leaked documents, Vučić summoned conservation professor Dubravka Đukanović, director of Serbia's institute for the protection of cultural monuments, to the presidential palace on 6 February 2024 to discuss overriding the building's protected status.

Charges were brought last December against senior regime figures. Kushner's company then announced the project would not proceed "at this time". Vučić responded by calling the prosecutors "corrupt gangs" who "fabricated cases", adding: "We have lost an exceptional investment" and promising to hold accountable "everyone who participated in causing this damage".

The case is believed to be the first criminal prosecution resulting from the Trumps' global moneymaking campaign, which critics describe as a pay-to-play arrangement in which everything from sanctions relief to cutting-edge chips is available to those who enrich the first family. Representatives of the Trumps and Kushner deny any part in the removal of the building's protected status and reject the pay-to-play characterisation.

The timing serves Vučić well. He faces an election on 25 October, seeking to extend his twelve years in power against a mass protest movement spurred by government corruption. The snap election means a court hearing at which witnesses might reveal details of his own involvement will not take place until after the vote. A former propaganda chief under Slobodan Milošević, Vučić hosted both Trump Jr and Kushner in Belgrade and posted a photograph of himself with Kushner on Instagram.

The pattern extends beyond the Balkans. Days earlier, Washington secured a Greenland security agreement granting American forces free rein across the island while reopening prospecting for oil, gas and minerals that Denmark had halted for climate reasons — and simultaneously lifted sanctions on Russian diesel after years of pressuring Europe to forgo Russian hydrocarbons at its own expense. European leaders are learning that the currency of relations with Washington is now measured in land, concessions and business deals for the first family. Vučić, whose country seeks EU membership, appears to have paid in a historic building.