&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's $1.4 billion Albania project sparks mass protests and corruption probe")
A massive coastal development project in Albania, linked to Affinity Partners of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, has sparked widespread protests. The high-profile couple who served as the senior advisors in the first Trump administration and remain prominent figures during US President Donald Trump's second term. The controversy sparked after the 44-year-old Ivanka revealed she and Kushner spent years pursuing the opportunity before acquiring the island, for a reported $1.4billion.
Ivanka said that the island was a “lucky discovery”. "We were on a friend's boat, and we stopped for a swim – effectively, that's how we found it," Ivanka recalled of the lucky discovery. "We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated," Ivanka said. The project was “not business”, rather something personal.
The project is heavily bankrolled by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which is a major investor at Affinity Partners. The project spanned two islands. First is Sazan Island, an uninhabited 1,400-hectare island in the Adriatic Sea, that once served as a top-secret, heavily fortified military base during the Cold War. Ivanka and Jared plan to build 10,000 luxury hotel rooms, private villas, and a yacht marina. Next is an ecologically sensitive coastal area on the island within the Vjosa-Narta wetland ecosystem.
The project led to widespread protests from the locals, which were some of the largest civil demonstrations in the history of Albania. Tens of thousands of protestors have flooded the capital city of Tirana and the southern coastal towns protesting the “private property” claim with slogans "Albania is not for sale".
Environmental groups have warned that the project could lead to these long-protected habitats being “irreversibly destroyed”. According to the Associated Press, "excavators and other heavy machinery have entered the area, "opening access routes, digging into the sand, clearing land among pine trees, and installing fencing." Meanwhile, Edi Rama, the prime minister of Albania said, "Albania should not be a country that fears an extraordinary project like this one, where exceptional partners have come together to invest 4 billion euros ($4.6billion)."
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Albania's Special Structure Against Corruption and Organised Crime has opened a formal investigation into the project. Investigators are probing how the land's protected status was rapidly altered by the government and whether the project exploits political connections. This bore resemblance to the earlier high-profile Affinity Partners project in Serbia, which offers a cautionary tale. Serbia’s prosecutor for organised crime charged four people, including a government minister, with abuse of office and falsification of documents to help pave the way for the development.
