Eurasia Press & News
On Wednesday afternoon, the Ministry of Construction informed the public that a contract was signed on behalf of the Government of Serbia on the revitalization of the complex of the former General Staff and the Ministry of Defense (formerly the Federal Secretariat for National Defense).
The information was only found on the website at 19:40, and as stated, the contract was signed with the company “Affinity Global Development”.
Who did the relevant minister sign the contract with?
Obviously a mistake was made because the word Affinity was not spelled correctly. An additional problem is that the name of this company – Affinity Global Development – cannot be found on the Internet except in news from Serbian portals.
We also tried the company databases, but in the multitude of companies that contain the name Affinity, none contain exactly these three words.
Whether the minister signed a contract with a non-existent company or the PR service of the ministry did not correctly convey its name or whether it is a newly founded company formed for this work will remain unknown for some time.
At the same time, the Ministry calls it a reputable American company.
Yes, as usual for our climate, there is a lack of information, which can also be seen from the fact that some media cite Jared Kushner as the director of this company, and others Asher Abesera.
The contract signer likes culture and works big
And who is Asher Abesera, who put his initials on the contract, and his face on joint photos with Minister Vesić and Minister of Finance Siniš Mali, who attended the signing ceremony.
According to the American media, he is the person who will lead the implementation of the project in Belgrade.
From what can be concluded from the available information, he is the one who is the professional half of this duo, who deals with the selection and development of real estate, while Kushner is the investor who provides the money and uses his influence and position to arrange deals.
Kushner is under fire from the American public and the media, especially because most of the money for his business ventures came from Saudi Arabia .
Abesera has been in the real estate business for almost two decades. In 2013, he founded the company Livwrk and what is interesting, on his website he specifically emphasizes “cultural infrastructure”, i.e. “development of infrastructure that meets culture”. It invests in buildings that have a rich history and cultural value, which it then reconstructs and turns into office, commercial and residential space, thus bringing added value to the community (which has a special place in American society).
Livwrk’s website highlights 11 projects, eight of which are in New York, one in Los Angeles, and two in Miami, and they correspond to the mentioned strategy because some of them are older than 100 years (one of them was rented by Musk’s company Tesla Motors for its premises on the east coast).
The company’s role in those projects was most often design development, construction or reconstruction management, marketing and rental.
On the one hand, Abesera’s approach to building development coincides with the public’s desire for the General Staff to remain as it is and to be renovated. On the other hand, Livwrk bought and reconstructed these buildings, which raises the question of who will be the owner of the two buildings on the corner of Nemanjina and Knez Miloš.
The Ministry’s announcement does not mention that issue, but only states that the land will be leased. In fact, no one expects the existing buildings to survive at all.
All the time, there is talk about the reconstruction, which many perceive as the restoration of existing buildings, but at the end of the news there is a quote from Abesere, which says that “reconstruction does not mean only the construction of buildings…”.
Whether it is a mistranslation or the signatory definitely plans to demolish the buildings and build more modern ones that we saw in the illustrations remains to be seen.
According to the published illustrations, we are talking about new modern buildings, but it is also obvious that such massive objects would hardly fit in the existing space, and in addition, either someone made a mistake when drawing, or the project, due to its dimensions, would also entail the demolition of the adjacent, old General Staff building in Kneza Miloš Street.
At this point, the question of ownership of the buildings does not seem to arise because they are likely to be demolished. On the other hand, even the first illustrations of Belgrade on the water presented to the public do not correspond to what is built there today.
Strategy of Abesere
If Abesera is the one who will lead the entire project, it can be concluded from his business that five conditions need to be met in order for him to decide to enter the business. Most of them, if not all, are filled by the General Staff, so it’s no wonder why the Americans set their eyes on these facilities.
The first condition is that it is a premium location, that it is an empty building and that there is a possibility to change its purpose.
The second is for them to be Class A and Class B facilities that, through issuance, give a high return on money compared to comparable facilities.
The third is that it has between 4,500 and 23,000 square meters of leasable space, and that the smallest market capitalization of the project is from 15 million to 500 million dollars.
The fourth is that it should be a building that will have mixed use (residential spaces, offices, shops, restaurants, cultural facilities, recreational facilities and entertainment).
And finally, the fifth condition is that it should be close to public transportation, that is, less than five minutes on foot from the subway, bus, and other modes of transportation.
It is evident that the buildings of the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense meet these conditions, and from these strategic directions it can be inferred that the contents at this location will serve to generate rental income (which is the way Trump also earns from his real estate).
Kushner, Grenell, Trump
Even earlier, the media put Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, in the foreground as the main man in this business. He is the one who has a company with a similar name – Affinity Partners. He himself confirmed that he is entering into this investment by posting information and pictures on social networks.
The New York Times reported yesterday that “the Serbian government has approved a contract with Jared Kushner” to build a luxury hotel. As noted, Kushner plans to implement a hotel construction project worth 500 million dollars in partnership with Richard Grenell. It is remembered that Grenell was the first to suggest that American investors try to rebuild this site that was bombed 25 years ago.
The text adds that the deal is related to Affinity Partners, a three-year-old investment fund with three billion dollars at its disposal, which it received from a fund from Saudi Arabia. It is also recalled that Donald Trump wanted to build a hotel on the same location in 2013.
For Kushner, this is the biggest project that his company has been working on since its foundation, the New York Times writes, adding that a hotel, retail space and 1,500 residential units are planned, along with a museum and a memorial complex. Kushner’s company announced that the memorial complex will be owned by the state, which will also manage it.
Connections of Kushner and Abesera
The New York Times also points out that Kushner will develop this project with longtime partner Asher Abeser, who will oversee the construction. It is added that part of the deal is an agreement to share the profit from the complex, which will have three blocks or buildings, with the Government of Serbia (the state will allegedly take 22 percent of the profit).
The American newspaper states that the project has also attracted the attention of Democrats in the US and that they have asked Republicans in the Oversight and Accountability Committee to investigate this business, but Republicans have not yet taken any action.
A joint photo of Kushner and Abesera is available on the Internet, as well as Usher’s confirmation that they collaborated. Also, for numerous media, at the time when Trump’s son-in-law became an advisor in the White House, he spoke about Kushner and praised him. One example is the statement that Kushner is the type of person who, even though he has sold billions of dollars worth of real estate, cleans up after a meeting even if the meeting was not in his office.
In a 2020 op-ed, Abesera told Business Insider that the duo jointly invested in five real estate projects before Kushner entered politics as an adviser to his father-in-law, and remained co-owners in two (he clarified elsewhere that Kushner had three left the project even before its completion).
The occasion for the text was Abesera’s purchase of a shopping center in Los Angeles, which met with great resistance and protests from the local population (dominantly African-American). Protesters gathered in front of his house (they believed that Kushner was behind the whole thing). They also protested in front of Abesera’s office, sent him threatening voice messages and distributed leaflets to his neighbors. They accused him of encouraging gentrification in that community with the investment – by turning a degraded building into a space for well-off buyers, it affects the structure of the population because the poor will leave the area.
Abesera stated that opponents of the project cited his previous dealings with Kushner as a key criticism, but he insisted in the text that he “no longer has a close business relationship with Kushner” (for four years at the time). “I was quickly accused of being the wrong man for this project and that Kushner was secretly going to be in the business.” “Neither Jared nor his family are involved in any way and if they asked to get involved in the business I would say – no, you can’t participate,” Abesera told Business Insider.
In the second place he was even more explicit:
“I have never denied that we had, and ‘had’ is the key word, a relationship in the past with Kushner Companies,” Abesera said. “I’ve always said we had five jobs before Jared went to the White House. Not only before he went to the White House but also before he entered the universe of politics. There was no instrument that predicted that his father-in-law would become president, and that he would work there. And before he went to the White House, we stopped talking and doing business. I’ve never met Trump. I never had any business with him.”
The need to “shake off” the connection with Kushner in third place takes him even further: “At the time we worked together, they had nothing to do with the political platform.” He also said that Jared Kushner was a Democrat, a liberal, who did a lot of things for the community, in soup kitchens, charity programs and that he was different from the man we see today (when he was an advisor in the White House). “That thing came out of the blue, that my partner ended up working for a father-in-law who became president.” It was neither in the cards nor in the universe I’m in.”
Cooperation has apparently been renewed (or never stopped).
Real estate prodigy
The media also state that they collaborated on the Dumbo Heights project, the reconstruction of the headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in New York. When they moved to another part of New York in 2009, Livwrk bought the central building and five other surrounding buildings in 2013.
For that project, Abehsera said he and Kushner wanted to create a space where people could live, work, eat, drink and exercise without wanting to leave. Their idea was to reconstruct other buildings in the area in order to create a special kind of campus, that is, a cultural community.
In a 2017 article, the Bridge portal called him a real estate prodigy.
He was born in Los Angeles. The father is originally from Morocco, who built his career in the production of TV commercials. Although he has most of his projects in New York, Usher especially points out that he is from Los Angeles. His mother is the fifth generation born in that city.
Asher is said to have started working at a gas station at the age of 15, and started his career in the real estate sector through an internship at a company. He got a job at Two trees management, which turned Dumbo into one of the most expensive residential areas in New York. David Valentas of Two trees said they hired Abesera to sell apartments and he was incredibly successful.
As he developed the idea of a new approach to real estate development, Abesera left Two trees to launch Livwrk in 2013. That new approach was mixed-use real estate, specifically geared toward meeting the tastes and needs of millennials. He became interested in the facilities of Jehovah’s Witnesses, invited Kushner to participate, secured investors and they made a better offer than his former firm.
Vesić: Framework contract, no details agreed
Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Goran Vesić said yesterday that the details of the lease and financial details for the revitalization of the complex of the former Ministry of Defense and General Staff in Knez Miloša Street in Belgrade, which was demolished in the NATO bombing in 1999, have not yet been agreed. years.
On Wednesday, the minister, on behalf of the Government of Serbia, signed a contract on the revitalization of the General Staff with the American company “Affinity Global Development”, headed by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the former US President Donald Trump, but Vesić claims for Insider television that it is only a “framework” contract”.
According to him, the Government chose a partner with that contract, who now, based on the contract, has the right to start working on the project, to communicate with competent institutions in Serbia, such as institutes – from those for protection to those for urban planning.
Vesić added that Kushner’s company can now call for an international tender for a memorial center for the victims of NATO aggression and that in the meantime that project be declared a project of national importance.
Only after that, according to the minister, there will be a commercial contract that needs to be signed and within which all the details will be known – from the price of land lease for 99 years to the cost of revitalization.
“So the land will not be sold, it is defined by this contract, that there is no sale, but it will be defined what the value of the building will be, how much that revitalization will cost, because it is not known yet, until the projects and plans are made, so “The real contract that will define all of this is still waiting for us, and I don’t think it’s even possible to conclude it for a period shorter than a year and a half, or two years, because all this needs to be completed in the meantime,” said Vesić.
When asked by Insider about claims in the media that the 99-year lease will be free of charge, Vesić said that this is not true.
“No, that’s not true, it’s not true, according to the Law on Planning and Construction, Article 86, there is, so you can conclude a contract by direct negotiation, when it comes to a project of national importance, you cannot lease it without compensation, that is also not true,” said Vesić.
He said that this possibility exists if it is done through an interstate agreement.
“So which of those models will be applied depends on when the investor has finished all these jobs and when we start signing the commercial contract,” replied the Minister of Construction.
