Serbia’s culture minister and three officials are on trial for corruption over a failed Trump-branded hotel project in Belgrade, accused of forgery and abuse of office.
BELGRADE: Serbia’s culture minister and three other senior officials pleaded not guilty to corruption charges over a scrapped hotel project linked to the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.
Nikola Selakovic and the other defendants were jeered as “thieves” by protesters as they arrived at the Special Court for Organised Crime in Belgrade.
Prosecutors allege officials forged documents to enable a Trump-branded luxury hotel on the site of the bombed-out former Yugoslav army headquarters.
“It is not clear to me what wrongdoing I am accused of,” Selakovic told the court.
The plan to demolish the headquarters faced fierce public opposition as the site is both a memorial for 1999 NATO bombing victims and a piece of modernist architecture.
Despite an ongoing investigation, the government moved to fast-track the project by removing the site’s “cultural-heritage status”.
The plan, backed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, was abandoned in December after prosecutors indicted Selakovic and the others.
“Because meaningful projects should unite rather than divide, and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the City of Belgrade, we are withdrawing our application and stepping aside at this time,” Kushner’s Affinity Partners said.
The trial is the first of a sitting Serbian minister in decades and has drawn strong reactions from supporters and critics of President Aleksandar Vucic.
Vucic and his ministers have criticised prosecutors over this case and a separate trial linked to a deadly 2024 train station roof collapse.
That disaster sparked a student-led anti-corruption movement and calls for early elections, which Vucic has rejected.
