Revealed: Serbian ruler’s secret role in ‘illegal’ effort to help Trump business

Serbia’s authoritarian ruler personally intervened to advance an allegedly illegal scheme to hand over a protected site in Belgrade for a Trump tower, the Guardian can reveal.

Aleksandar Vučić summoned officials to a meeting at his presidential offices about the project, which has culminated in a landmark indictment of senior figures from his regime on charges of abuse of public office.

The criminal case is believed to be the first resulting from the Trumps’ global moneymaking campaign, described by critics as a “pay to play” arrangement where everything from sanctions relief to cutting-edge chips is available to those who enrich the first family and their associates.

The alleged scheme to override the protected status of a historic building in the Serbian capital looms over an election scheduled for 25 October, when Vučić will seek to extend his 12 years in power in the face of a mass protest movement spurred by government corruption.

A nationalist former propaganda chief under Slobodan Milošević, Vučić hosted the US president’s son Donald Trump Jr and son-in-law Jared Kushner in Belgrade as they developed plans for a $500m hotel and residential tower to add to their global property portfolios.

After the abuse of power charges were brought last December, Kushner’s company announced the project would not proceed “at this time”. Vučić threatened reprisals, calling the prosecutors “corrupt gangs” who “fabricated cases”.

“We have lost an exceptional investment,” the Serbian president said. “I will personally ensure that everyone who participated in causing this damage is held accountable.”

Vučić’s culture minister is among those charged with abuse of power. But a Guardian investigation, drawing on interviews and leaked documents, reveals that the Serbian president himself led the initial meeting where the alleged scheme was discussed. This crucial meeting is not mentioned in the indictment, raising questions about what information the prosecutors are holding back and why.

Representatives of the Trumps and Kushner said they had no part in the removal of the building’s protected status and that it would be “false” to say the Belgrade project was part of a “pay to play” scheme.

Vučić did not respond to requests for comment. His decision to call a snap election means that a hearing at which witnesses might reveal details of his involvement will not take place until after the vote.

A free 99-year lease

On 6 February 2024, Dubravka Đukanović, a Serbian conservation professor in her 60s, arrived for a meeting at the presidency, a domed former royal palace. For three years, she had been the director of the country’s institute for the protection of cultural monuments.

The topic was the General Staff building, the former Yugoslav ministry of defence in central Belgrade. The building, an architectural gem seen as an emblem of resistance to the Nazis, was already cherished when Nato forces bombed it in 1999 during its campaign to force Milošević to withdraw from Kosovo, deepening its resonance.

Vučić himself had reaffirmed the General Staff building’s legally protected status in 2016. Now, the president said he wanted Đukanović to rescind it, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. Some unspecified “foreign investor” was keen on the site.

Under Serbian law, stripping the General Staff building of its protected status was not in Đukanović’s gift. Her institute would have to commission an expert opinion, which would have to conclude that there were good reasons why protected status was no longer merited.

But the president wanted it done. At 6ft 6in and intolerant of dissent, Vučić can be intimidating. His tone towards Đukanović and another heritage official present was unpleasant, the sources said. He told them they were lazy and incompetent. The message was clear: do what I want or resign.

A plausible explanation for Vučić’s forceful intervention came the following month, when an agreement between the Serbian government and Kushner’s real estate company leaked.

Married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, Kushner had been an influential White House aide during his father-in-law’s first term. Since Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, Kushner had been concentrating on his investment fund.

By early 2024, Trump was storming to the Republican nomination and was favourite to win the coming election. If Trump took back the White House, Kushner would once more be one of the most influential people on the planet.

The leaked agreement showed the Serbian authorities had granted Kushner’s company a 99-year lease over the General Staff site, free of charge.

Kushner, whose spokesperson said he had been looking at the project since 2021, posted an image of the design on X, professing himself “excited”.

The news was not universally welcomed in Belgrade. “Serbia is not a buffet, and Vučić is not a waiter,” said Aleksandar Jovanović Ćuta, an environmental activist who revealed the agreement. “This is not his private property.”

Yet Vučić’s regime proceeded to sign a contract, dated 13 May 2024 and seen by the Guardian, undertaking that the “cultural heritage designation” of the site would be removed “to the satisfaction” of Kushner’s company.

Comply or resign

The week after the contract was signed, Đukanović was summoned to another meeting. The president was not there this time. Siniša Mali, his finance minister and right-hand man, took charge.

Mali urged Đukanović and Olivera Vučković, Belgrade’s top heritage official, to cancel the General Staff site’s protected status, according to the indictment’s summary of testimony the two women would later give prosecutors. It makes no reference to the earlier meeting with the president but indicates that the subject had previously been broached.

“Mali asked them if they had given it any thought,” the indictment says, “and if they would initiate the procedure to remove the building’s protected status.”

The women refused, “believing that the legal conditions for it were not met”. In that case, Mali told them, repeating his boss’s ultimatum from February, they should resign. They did.

In her resignation letter, which the Guardian has seen, Đukanović wrote that she could not agree “to inappropriate interventions that would permanently destroy all the values of the complex, which testifies to the highest achievements of contemporary Serbian architecture and is of incalculable importance for preserving enduring creative values, the education of future generations, and the strengthening of the cultural identity of the Serbian people”.

Approached by the Guardian, Đukanović and Vučković confirmed the accuracy of this account. Đukanović added: “I prefer not to make any statement on this matter while the court proceedings are ongoing.”

Little was heard of the General Staff plan for months. In November, Trump beat Kamala Harris to win re-election. Ten days later, Vučić’s government announced that the General Staff site had been stripped of its protected status.

Keeping it in the family

One of the first things Trump did upon regaining the presidency was to ditch the pledge he made in his first term that his family business would refrain from doing deals abroad while he was in office.

“The scale of corruption will be orders of magnitude greater than what we saw in the first Trump administration,” Kathleen Clark, a government ethics lawyer at Washington University School of Law, warned at the time. Trump had made it much easier, she said, to buy his favour.

The family business remained officially under the control of his two oldest sons, Don Jr and Eric. In January 2025, four days after their father’s inauguration, Eric spoke about some new projects. The Trumps and the Kushners, New York real estate families united by marriage, had decided to embark on their first venture together: Kushner’s Belgrade hotel and tower would bear the Trump name.

“It’s going to be fun to bring the family together,” Eric told the New York Times. “Serbia is one of the fastest-growing countries in Europe, and we’re incredibly honoured to be there.” Kushner, who had travelled to Belgrade for what Vučić called an “inspiring” meeting with the Serbian leader, added: “Our research showed that the Trump brand would be the best for this market.”

That brand has enjoyed a surge in demand around the world during Trump’s second term, accompanied by allegations that it comes with a quid pro quo.

In Vietnam, Eric was showered with confetti at the groundbreaking ceremony for a £1.5bn golf resort, the permits for which were granted with unusual speed. Then Trump halved Vietnam’s tariffs. The Saudis poured money into Kushner’s fund, and plans emerged for a Trump plaza in Jeddah. Then Trump agreed to sell the kingdom new US fighter jets. A cryptocurrency baron’s company and senior Emiratis cut a lucrative transaction with World Liberty Financial, the digital currency venture Don Jr and Eric founded. Trump gave the crypto baron a pardon and the Emiratis access to restricted US chips.

Asked about such deals last year, Kushner, now a presidential envoy to Russia, Israel and elsewhere, said: “What people call conflicts of interests … I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world.”

Those who strike up “trusted relationships” with the Trumps, even if there is not an obvious quid pro quo, gain something less tangible but maybe still more valuable: the aura of friendship with a president who is happy to wield his superpower to make or break smaller nations and their leaders.

Vučić has plenty in common with Trump. Both are friendly with Vladimir Putin and contemptuous of the EU – in Vučić’s case, despite his country having applied to join. A shared disdain for Nato may help explain why the one part of the General Staff building’s heritage that the redevelopment pledged to retain was a memorial to the alliance’s “aggression” against Serbia.

And there is a lot that Vučić could use US help with, not least the fate of Kosovo, which he says is still part of Serbia.

Not long after his father returned to office, Don Jr landed in Belgrade. Vučić said that during their meeting he “emphasised the importance of the economic and political relations between Serbia and the USA and stressed the importance of strategic cooperation between the two countries and joint projects in the years to come”. When Don Jr returned the following month, Vučić fed him a choice sucking-pig.

For Vučić, the support of the first family was timely. Days before his regime stripped the General Staff site of its protection, the collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station, which killed 16 people, triggered rolling protests against graft. The student organisers’ slogan has become “Serbia or mafia”.

Don Jr’s visit came on the eve of the biggest demonstration in Serbia’s history. He invited Vučić on to his podcast, Triggered, and declared that the Serb ruler’s opponents were “weaponising” the Novi Sad disaster, just as Trump’s had done with the Capitol riots after his 2020 election defeat.

But the protesters maintained their momentum, and began to rally against the Trump tower. In May 2025, Vučić went to the US, hoping to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida members’ club. He got to see Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s disgraced lawyer, but not the president. State media reported this was because Vučić fell ill.

No sooner was Vučić home than police arrested Goran Vasić, the man who had been installed as head of the heritage institute to replace Dubravka Đukanović following her resignation. To achieve the cancellation of the General Staff building’s protected status, prosecutors said, Vasic had forged a supportive expert opinion.

More arrests followed. In December 2025, Vučić’s culture minister was indicted for abuse of office for his alleged part in the General Staff scheme. Within days, Kushner’s company announced the project was off.

Coup or cover-up?

Vučić’s threat of reprisals was not idle.

His allies attacked Đukanović, claiming that she had tried to profit personally from her time as a heritage official. Her deputy, who received a visit from the state security service after she went on television to denounce the cancellation of the General Staff building’s protection, has been accused of unrelated misconduct. The Serbian conservators’ industry body said this had “the obvious aim of discrediting her”. Both are expected to give evidence in the criminal proceedings.

For the specialist unit of organised-crime prosecutors who brought the charges, this is a watershed case. Never before has a serving Serbian minister been indicted.

Vučić accuses the prosecutors of staging a coup. Others, though, fear they are pulling their punches. That concern increased when Nikola Selaković, the indicted culture minister, used a court appearance in April to reveal that, while police were raiding his ministry, he was in his office sipping plum brandy and smoking cigarettes with Mladen Nenadić, the head of the organised-crime prosecutors’ unit. The unit’s spokesperson said there was “no discussion regarding the course of the case”.

“In everything that happened regarding potential investments, I saw a chance for our country and citizens,” said Selaković, who faces three years in prison if convicted.

Vučić has not been charged. Neither has his lieutenant, Mali. Both deny wrongdoing.

The indictment refers to evidence from witnesses who were present at the Vučić meeting in February 2024 but does not mention it, raising questions about the apparent decision to omit what would appear to be a key part of the narrative.

The spokesperson for the organised crime prosecutors’ unit said that it had evidence regarding Vučić’s February 2024 meeting with the heritage officials. Beyond those already indicted, prosecutors were “conducting pretrial proceedings in this case to determine potential criminal liability of other persons as well”, the spokesperson added.

Vučić has stepped down and cannot seek another term but is expected to retain his control over the regime if he is elected prime minister on 25 October. In one of his last acts as president, he issued 49 pardons. Some of the recipients have not been identified and it is not clear whether they include defendants in the General Staff case.

The White House referred questions to the Trumps’ company. Its representative said: “The Trump Organization has no plans to develop any project in Belgrade, was never, at any point, involved in any discussions or negotiations to acquire any site in Belgrade and denies any involvement in or knowledge of the alleged claims.”

Kushner’s spokesperson said: “The suggestion that Jared Kushner pursued the Belgrade project as part of any political arrangement or ‘pay to play’ scheme is categorically false.” Rather, it was “an opportunity to transform a site associated with a painful chapter in Serbia’s history into a symbol of healing and reconciliation, while bringing substantial private investment, jobs and economic opportunity to Belgrade”.

The spokesperson added: “Jared had no involvement in the Serbian government’s internal processes concerning the site’s protected status.”

For all Vučić’s difficulties, the tale of the Trump Tower Belgrade does not appear to have put others off doing business with the first family. Trump retains stakes in dozens of his companies, even if his sons nominally run them. In July, he released his financial disclosure for his first year back at the White House. It showed he had made $2bn.