As Republican lawmakers continue to attack Hunter Biden's past international business dealings, former Trump administation senior White House adviser Jared Kusher just nailed down a $500 million luxury hotel deal in Belgrade, Serbia, officials have revealed.
Investment firm Affinity Partners — controlled by Trump's real-estate developer son-in-law and backed by a $2 billion Saudi sovereign fund investment — has officially secured a 99-year permit to develop a luxury compound on the Belgrade site.
Negotiations to develop the site reach back to 2013, Politico reported, before Donald Trump became president and he appointed Kusher as a senior aide, even though neither had any experience in politics.
The deal will be carried out in partnership with Richard Grenell, also a former Trump administration aide. Grenell first proposed that American investors redevelop the bombed-out site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense while he was a serving as a special envoy to the Balkans, the New York Times reported.
The project is hugely controversial — in Serbia — because of the sensitive historical significance of the spot. The former army and intelligence center on the site was targeted by American bombing in 1999 during NATO's assault on Serbia amid that nation's bloody conflicts with other former Yugoslav countries.
Protests against the project erupted in Belgrade on Thursday.
But the development plan is backed by what Politico characterized as the Serbian "political elite." Goran Vesić, Serbia's construction and infrastructure minister, hailed Affinity as a "reputable American company" interested in developing the former Federal Secretariat for National Defense, which has long been a goal of Serbian leaders, Vesić noted in a statement.
To assuage critics the site will include a memorial, according to Vesić. That may be a difficult juggling act since criticism of bombing at the site by both the U.S. and NATO would likely be expected to be part of any memorial.
Joe Biden's son, Hunter, has come under heavy criticsm for business dealings while his father was vice president. But similar scrutiny has not been brought to bear on Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump or her husband Kushner, even though they were both senior White House aides, while Hunter Biden never held a White House role.
In 2018 China granted 18 trademarks to businesses linked to Donald and Ivanka Trump while they were both working in the White House.
And just months after Trump lost the White House, Kushner secured $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund for a new investment company he launched after currying favor with the Saudis while he worked in the White House for his father-in-law. The sovereign fund is controlled by Sauid Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who U.S. intelligence determined ordered the dismemberment murder of Washington Post columnis Jamal Khashoggi, thought Trump defended the prince from the White House.
Kushner will be recieving "concessions" from Sebia for the new project, the Times noted, raising concerns about a close family member of a potential future president financially profiting from a foreigh government.
"It is a conflict of interest in the most stark sense: The president of the United States needs to be advancing the interest of the United States and not the financial interests of family members," Adav Noti, executive director of Campaign Legal Center, which tracks ethics issues in the federal government, told the Times.
up to late March, 99% of the money placed with Kushner's firm by investors has come from foreign sources, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Times reported.
