Umair
More than a decade after Donald J. Trump first floated the idea of developing a Trump hotel on a government-owned site in Serbia, his family is now close to securing that dream in a complicated deal that also involves a real estate magnate from Abu Dhabi and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law.
The plan illustrates the continued ambitions of Mr. Trump’s family to forge new international deals, even as he has returned to the White House. It also reflects a diminished focus, compared with that of his first term, on avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest associated with the overseas projects.
A Trump-branded luxury hotel is slated to rise on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense in Belgrade, which was bombed by NATO in 1999 and has been largely vacant since. It is an idea that Mr. Trump initially proposed in 2013, and that Mr. Kushner started to pursue after he left his job as a White House aide during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Mr. Kushner has formed a partnership with Mohamed Alabbar, the developer of the Burj Khalifa hotel in Dubai, the world’s tallest structure. They plan to build the new hotel on the Belgrade site with a lease on the property from the government of Serbia, which will share in the profits, according to a draft of the agreement.
This would be the first large-scale real estate project between the Trump Organization and the Kushner family. Even though the two have long been in the business in New York, they have previously pursued separate projects.
The hotel deal in Serbia is one of several recently announced new outlets of the Trump brand, with other projects disclosed in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.
“Serbia is one of the fastest-growing countries in Europe, and we’re incredibly honored to be there,” Eric Trump, the president’s son, said in an interview on Friday confirming the new deal, adding that “it’s going to be fun to bring the family together.”
The deal with Serbia comes as the nation is looking for support from the United States for its long-stalled bid to join the European Union. The United States has also pushed Serbia to tighten its relations with Europe and the West overall, as opposed to Russia, with which it has long had economic ties.
In May, Serbia approved the plan to lease the former Ministry of Defense site to a company affiliated with Mr. Kushner to build the 175-room hotel, retail space and more than 1,500 residential units in three separate towers. The approved plan includes a 99-year lease and a memorial complex to those injured or killed during the NATO bombings.
The Trump family announced an ethics plan last month that included a provision that it would not form new deals with foreign governments, even as it was moving ahead with new international projects.
Eric Trump said in Friday’s interview that the project did not violate that provision, as the Trump hotel would be under contract with the development company building the hotel and not with the Serbian government, which owns the property.
But the proposal brought immediate criticism from ethics attorneys, who called it yet another example of the Trump family’s lack of restraint at the start of Mr. Trump’s second White House term.
In just the last week, the family started a cryptocurrency venture, even as Mr. Trump appointed the new acting chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees cryptocurrency.
“The Trump family is placing so few guardrails on their private business, it creates opportunities for foreign governments to enrich the president in hopes of receiving favorable treatment,” said Deepak Gupta, a constitutional attorney based in Washington. “And in this case, it seems like they are violating their own self-imposed limitations on foreign business deals.”
Mr. Gupta worked on two of the lawsuits filed during Mr. Trump’s first term that claimed he was violating what is known as the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits payments from foreign governments to U.S. officials.
In a statement to The New York Times on Friday, Mr. Kushner said that “our research showed that the Trump brand would be the best for this market,” and that together, Mr. Kushner and his partners hoped to build a project on par with the former Trump International Hotel in Washington, which operated out of the Old Post Office Building until the Trump family sold it in 2022.
The new project will be built through a partnership between Mr. Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, and Asher Abehsera, a real estate developer who worked with Mr. Kushner on deals in Brooklyn.
The other partner on the Serbia project is Eagle Hills, the company led by Mr. Alabbar, who is also building a $4 billion hotel and housing project on the Belgrade waterfront.
“This development underscores our commitment to elevating Belgrade’s status as a premier European city,” Mr. Alabbar said in a statement.
Most of Mr. Kushner’s capital comes from oil-rich sovereign-wealth funds, including from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar, countries that have so far committed a total of $4.6 billion to Mr. Kushner’s fund since he left the White House at the end of the first Trump administration.
For President Trump, the Serbia deal is the culmination of a plan he conceived in 2013, two years before he began running for president. Back then, Mr. Trump told a top Serbian government official that he wanted to build a luxury hotel on the ministry site.
Associates of the Trump Organization traveled to Belgrade at the time to inspect the location. The project did not come together before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016. But it was revived last year by Mr. Kushner and Richard Grenell, who served as special envoy to the Balkans in the first Trump administration and more recently had been Mr. Kushner’s business partner.
Mr. Grenell, who helped negotiate the deal, was recently named as an envoy for special missions in the new Trump administration.
“This project is now feasible thanks to Belgrade’s amazing growth and vibrancy,” Mr. Kushner said in the statement on Friday, without addressing the fact that the idea had been first proposed by his father-in-law.
