Serbia's president said there would be no halt to a luxury hotel development being built by President Donald Trump's son-in-law in Belgrade despite revelations that a forged document led to the site's protected status being lifted.
Speaking to Bloomberg News on May 16, Aleksandar Vucic contradicted prosecutors' findings announced earlier this week that said a cultural official in charge of the site's historic designation had admitted to forging a key document.
"There was not any kind of forgery and we will discuss it with everybody," Vucic said, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of European leaders in the Albanian capital, Tirana.
Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump's elder daughter, Ivanka, and served as a White House adviser during Trump's first term in office, last year announced a $500 million hotel complex in Belgrade.
The development centered on a pair of jagged unoccupied modernist brick structures in the center of Belgrade, the former General Staff headquarters for the army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The site was bombed by NATO jets in the spring of 1999, as part of a campaign to stop Serbian forces from attacking parts of Kosovo, which was still part of the country.
Despite being bombed out, the buildings retained their protected status, due to what activists said was their architectural significance.
Last November, the Serbian government stripped the buildings of that designation, paving the way for Kushner's company to move forward. That prompted outrage from historic preservationists.
On May 14, however, prosecutors announced the arrest of Goran Vasic, the acting director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, and said he had admitted fabricating an expert's opinion.
The Serbian Office of the Prosecutor for Organized Crime had no immediate response to Vucic's comments.
In response to the news of the alleged forgery, Kushner's development company, Affinity Partners, said it had learned of the arrest from news reports.
The company said it would "review the situation and determine next steps," according to The New York Times.
