On September 23, Donald Trump's oldest son, Donald Jr., sat down to dinner with Serbian businesspeople in Belgrade to discuss investment opportunities.

This was not a first for the Trump family: The former president's contacts to Serbian entrepreneurs and government representatives go as far back as 2013.

At the time, Ivica Dacic, then prime minister of Serbia, spoke publicly of Trump's interest in a real estate project.

The object in question was the former headquarters of the Yugoslav People's Army, which was seriously damaged in the NATO bombardment of 1999. But the negotiations came to nothing.

Then, in May of this year, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, led by the former US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, sealed the deal. The billion-dollar contract includes a 99-year lease on the complex.

Grenell is seen as a likely candidate for the post of secretary of state, should Trump win the presidential election in November. He was considered the most unpopular postwar US ambassador in Berlin during his time at the embassy. The Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung went as far as to call him an "undiplomat" because of his "loutish behavior."

Donald Trump Jr. recently praised him as the "top contender for secretary of state."

As Trump's special envoy for the Balkans, it was Grenell who pulled the strings in 2020 when Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti was ousted because he stood in the way of another deal.

The agreement in question was allegedly about a territorial exchange along ethnic lines between Serbia and Kosovo. In June 2020, the then-president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, and Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic wanted to meet Trump in the White House to sign the agreement.

According to reports, the agreement would have seen the four predominantly........

© Deutsche Welle