Eric Trump, the son of US President Donald Trump, has announced that the agreement to establish a hotel in Serbia is among several recently revealed Trump-branded developments, which also include projects in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Vietnam.

The initiative will be a collaboration between the Trump family and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.

“Serbia is one of the fastest-growing nations in Europe and we feel privileged to expand there,” Eric Trump shared during an interview with The New York Times on Friday, confirming the new arrangement, which he stated would be “exciting to unite the family.”

As reported by the Press News Agency (PNA), Serbia granted approval in May of last year for the former Ministry of Defense site to be leased to a Jared Kushner-linked company. Plans include the construction of a hotel with 175 rooms, office spaces, and over 1,500 residential units spread across three towers. The approved development is set with a 99-year lease and a memorial for the victims of the 1999 NATO bombing.

Jared Kushner has partnered with Mohammed Alabbar, the investor behind Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. They intend to establish the hotel on a site in Belgrade, leasing the land from the Serbian government, which will participate in profit-sharing according to the draft agreement, according to PNA.

This luxury Trump-branded hotel will be situated on the site of the Ministry of Defense in Belgrade, an area that was bombed during NATO’s 1999 intervention and has remained mostly vacant since. The proposal originated from Trump in 2013, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner has attempted to bring it to fruition after leaving his advisory role in the White House during Trump’s first term.

This will mark the Trump Organization and the Kushner family’s first major real estate venture together, although they have historically operated separately in New York.

Last month, the Trump family revealed an “ethics plan,” which includes a clause stating that they will refrain from engaging in new business ventures with foreign governments as they pursue new international projects, as reported by PNA.

Eric Trump explained in an interview that the hotel project complies with this stipulation because the Trump Hotel will contract with the development company and not directly with the Serbian government, which holds ownership of the property.

Nevertheless, legal experts have voiced concerns about ethics and potential conflicts of interest, arguing that this is yet another instance of the Trump family demonstrating imprudence at the onset of his second presidential term.

In a statement to The New York Times on Friday, Kushner mentioned that their research indicated that the Trump brand would be most suitable for that market and that he and his partners aim to build a hotel comparable to the former Trump International Hotel in Washington, which the Trump family sold in 2022.

The upcoming hotel will be developed in partnership with Kushner’s private equity firm Afiniti Partners and Asher Abehser, a real estate developer with whom Kushner has collaborated on other projects in Brooklyn.

The second partner for the Serbian project is Eagle Hills, led by Alabbar, who is coordinating a $4 billion residential and hotel project called “Belgrade on the Water.”

“This new initiative underscores our commitment to elevating Belgrade’s standing as a leading European city,” Alabbar commented in a statement.

According to the newspaper, the agreement with Serbia arrives as the country seeks US backing for its long-delayed bid to join the European Union, amidst US encouragement for Serbia to bolster relations with Europe and the West instead of Russia, with which it maintains long-term economic relations.

For Trump, the project in Serbia is the realization of a vision he proposed in 2013, two years before launching his presidential campaign. At that time, Trump expressed to a high-ranking Serbian official his desire to establish a luxury hotel on the grounds of the Ministry of Defense in Belgrade.

Although Trump Organization associates visited Belgrade to evaluate the location, the project did not move forward prior to Trump’s election in 2016. The portal notes that Kushner and Richard Grenell, who served as the special envoy for the Balkans during Trump’s first administration and later became Kushner’s business partner, revisited the site last year.

Grenell, who facilitated the agreement, has recently been appointed as Trump’s special envoy for missions.

“The project is viable now due to Belgrade’s remarkable growth and vitality,” Kushner stated in a press release on Friday.

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