Cyber-Surveillance and Real Estate: Serbia’s Endless Power Play

Aleksandar Vučić has spent twelve years attempting to charm every power broker in sight while keeping his domestic opponents firmly under heel. Yet his latest attempt at transaction-oriented diplomacy—offering up Belgrade's historic General Staff building for a $500 million Trump-branded luxury development—has collapsed into a tawdry tale of illegal spyware, criminal indictments, and political desperation.

The fallout reached a new low when digital forensics experts at Citizen Lab identified that prosecutor Rade Bajić had been targeted with high-grade mercenary spyware, likely Israel's notorious Pegasus system. Bajić was no ordinary target; he had been investigating the Vučić administration's illegal maneuvers to strip the landmark General Staff building of its heritage protection. The intention was simple: clear the way for Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. in exchange for valuable political goodwill in Washington.

When independent prosecutors filed a landmark indictment against senior officials in Vučić’s government for abusing public office, the commercial grand plan unraveled. Kushner hastily canceled the project, leaving the Serbian president with empty hands and serious legal troubles for his inner circle. Vučić, who publicly referred to Trump Jr. as his dear Don, reacted with characteristic hostility, vowing reprisals against the prosecutors involved. Bajić himself was abruptly removed from the investigation before the indictment surfaced, later appearing at anti-government rallies to declare that the law must apply equally to everyone.

By August, Apple formally warned Bajić that state-sponsored actors were attempting to breach his iPhone. The use of zero-click cyber weapons against a public prosecutor reveals how far the ruling apparatus will go to suppress domestic accountability. Serbia’s human rights organization, the Share Foundation, had already documented similar Pegasus surveillance deployed against anti-government demonstrators.

Meanwhile, Vučić’s strategy for survival remains unchanged: reshuffle the chessboard to avoid consequences. Having stepped down as president, he called snap elections for October 25 in an attempt to transition seamlessly into the prime minister’s office. He publicly defended his interference in the real estate deal by claiming, I fought for my people, and that’s what I’ll continue to do in the future.

Whether Serbian voters accept this self-serving narrative remains questionable. A nation caught in permanent geopolitical limbo cannot thrive when its leadership treats national infrastructure as a bargaining chip and its justice system as an enemy of the state.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com