BIRN: Illegal construction in Belgrade Waterfront – a luxury hotel is being built without a permit

Sep. 19, 2025.

Link to the original article: https://n1info.rs/biznis/birn-divlja-gradnja-u-beogradu-na-vodi-nice-luksuzni-hotel-bez-dozvole

In Belgrade Waterfront, below the Gazela bridge, works on the construction of a luxury hotel are well underway and piles have been installed for the building of a new market. For neither the hotel nor the market does the investor, the company Belgrade Waterfront, have issued construction permits, BIRN reveals.

Hidden behind huge advertising panels, at least four meters high, the Belgrade Waterfront project is slowly expanding towards the Belgrade Fair. There has long been a plan for its expansion all the way to Banovo Brdo and Ada Ciganlija, and now it is physically beginning to conquer newly acquired territory below the Gazela bridge towards the Fair, BIRN writes.

BIRN’s investigation shows, however, that works on the plots of the Belgrade Waterfront company, located next to the Gazela bridge, between Boulevard Živojina Mišića and Boulevard Woodrow Wilson – have been carried out without issued construction permits.

It concerns two locations: a hotel on which two above-ground levels have currently been built, and a market for which only excavations have been made and piles installed. The hotel and the market only have location conditions.

Next to the emerging hotel there is also an MUP fire station, which has been fully built and has been in use for more than a year, although it does not have a use permit.

All three plots on which these buildings are located are owned by the state of Serbia, and on the plots where the hotel and market are being built, the company Belgrade Waterfront has a 99-year lease right.

The competent inspections, the MUP responsible for the fire station, nor the company Belgrade Waterfront have responded to BIRN’s questions related to the construction and use of these three facilities.

Belgrade Waterfront hotel is being built without a construction permit
For the future four-star hotel being built next to the Gazela bridge – no construction permit has been issued, an inspection of the publicly available register of construction permits on the APR website shows. At the same time, at the location itself the mandatory construction board displaying data from the construction permit is not posted.

As can be seen from the APR register, the Belgrade Waterfront company has not even submitted a request for obtaining this permit yet.

Nevertheless, two above-ground levels have been erected on the plot, and dozens of workers and two cranes were actively working on the site when a BIRN journalist visited the construction site.

Satellite images show that the construction of the hotel, which for now only has the code name BW.29, began even before the location conditions were obtained in June of this year.

The location conditions foresee that the hotel will have 18,368.82 m2 of gross developed construction area and a total of 10 above-ground floors.

However, by law, before the start of any construction, after obtaining location conditions, the investor – in this case the Belgrade Waterfront company – had to obtain a construction permit and receive confirmation of the start of works on the plot.

Under the Criminal Code, for the criminal offense of construction without a construction permit, a prison sentence of six months to five years is предусмотрена for the investor, i.e. the responsible person in the company that is the investor.

BIRN sent questions to the Belgrade Waterfront company and director Zorana Burlić why the hotel is being built without a construction permit and whether the city or republican construction inspection visited the location, however, there was no response by the time of publication of the text.

Similarly, BIRN’s questions were not answered by the City of Belgrade, i.e. the city construction inspection, nor by the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, i.e. the republican construction inspection.

Also, the company CRE International withheld responses from BIRN: the role of this company in the construction of the future hotel is to be the responsible professional supervision over the execution of works, to manage costs and to act as the so-called FIDIC engineer. They were asked whether they still perform these tasks, given that the hotel is being built without a permit. They remained without an answer.