Jared Kushner Wants to Turn a Wild Stretch of Albania into a Luxury Resort

The Washington Post / Chico Harlan, Michael Kranish, Isaac Stanley-Becker

15:19 JST, August 18, 2024

ZVERNEC, Albania – In one of his several trips to Albania over the past few years, Jared Kushner went hiking along a stretch of Mediterranean coastline with pristine sand dunes and cliff-lined beaches. The place, he said in an interview, was “magnificent” and “natural.”

It was also, he said, an “incredible canvas” for his dreams of developing luxury projects. “It’s a place where people would love to be.”

Now, Kushner is seeking to transform this stretch of Albania into the kind of luxury resort that his father-in-law, former president Donald Trump, would brag about. It would be Kushner’s biggest project yet using part of his roughly $3 billion private equity fund – financed largely by investors in Saudi Arabia and other Middle East petrostates – bringing international tourism to an area that stagnated under years of communism and neglect.

But Kushner’s planned development is facing local and international blowback because of its potential environmental harm. Conservation groups warn that construction of the villas and hotel rooms could destroy a habitat for pelicans, flamingos and several endangered species and undermine international efforts to preserve one of the last wild, coastal ecosystems in the Mediterranean.

“I have huge concerns,” said Ryan Gellert, the CEO of the outdoors company Patagonia, which has worked with Albania to preserve a wild river system not far from Kushner’s prospective site. In an interview, Gellert said the river system hinges on a healthy delta. “It is a stunning area, unique across the Mediterranean. And the idea of them developing this, particularly in the absence of a master plan, is a really bad idea.”

The development is at least the second time Kushner has partnered with governments in the Balkans friendly to the former president, with the assistance of at least one former Trump administration official with deep ties to those nation’s leaders – a business practice that many Democrats and other critics say is a conflict of interest.

The former senior White House adviser has accepted billions from the sovereign investment funds of countries that he dealt with as a government official, and is now investing in countries his father-in-law would deal with if reelected. Kushner makes an estimated $40 million in management fees, regardless of what happens to the investment, and stands to make much more if the deals are profitable, according to a recent letter from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon.

Kushner acknowledged in an interview with The Washington Post that he benefited from relationships developed while in government, but he made a distinction between selling his expertise and setting up an investment company.

“A lot of people” leave government and “they kind of sell their services, you know, based on their relationships. I didn’t want to do that,” Kushner said. “I’ve always been an investor.”

Kushner and his partners also dispute the project would despoil the ecosystem. Asher Abehsera, the CEO and partner of Affinity Global Development, Kushner’s development firm, said the project would “enhance” the area, not threaten it. Kushner said that the project would “respect all environmental requirements” and be “very sustainable.”

Kushner has been helped by the fact that Albania is racing to tap into the travel boom that is enriching southern Europe, including neighbors in the Balkans. And Albania is led by a prime minister who had sought to work closely with Trump in his first term and would get a second chance if Trump returns to the White House. The prime minister, Socialist Edi Rama, had also met repeatedly with Trump’s then-special envoy to the Balkans, Richard Grenell – who now works for Kushner’s company helping to develop eastern European deals.

Kushner is planning two developments in Albania, but the more disputed one is in the coastal area of Zvernec – a secluded paradise of beaches and cliffs with the Adriatic Sea on one side and a lagoon on the other. The zone, which lies beyond the reach of roads, has long been seen as a treasure for would-be investors. It has also been off-limits as a protected landscape, where a sign warns even against camping.

But the Albanian government recently amended a law to open the door for high-end tourism – in facilities of “5 stars or more” – in such protected areas. Officials here say it is unrealistic to wall off potentially lucrative parts of a country that is trying to catch up economically after decades of isolation.

One month after that law was amended, Kushner shared on social media dreamy renderings of how that area could be remade: A series of curved resorts or villa complexes, almost resembling undulating waves, built of stone and wood and glass. Docks reaching into the lagoon. Pleasure boats casting shadows in azure waters.

The renderings even included a plane overhead, a nod to a new international airport being built nearby.

“It’s very difficult to say no to economic development,” said Besjana Guri, one of the founders of EcoAlbania, an environmental nongovernmental organization. But, she said, Albania has “something other countries don’t have, so you have to keep it like that, and profit from it in a different way. Albania still has nature.”

Tapping Saudi sovereign funds

Kushner created his private equity company, Affinity Partners, shortly after Trump lost his reelection bid – and it has since been his primary pursuit. He hired other former Trump officials and obtained $3 billion in funding, according to the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filing, including $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

That infusion was enabled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom Kushner had worked closely. As first reported by the New York Times, four members of a five-person panel of advisers to the Saudi Public Investment Fund initially were not in favor of providing the money to Kushner, but shortly after that meeting, the prince led the full board in approving the deal.

The funding came after a U.S. intelligence report concluded that the crown prince had approved the killing or capture of Washington Post contributing opinion columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The prince has denied ordering the killing but took responsibility for it, saying it was a “mistake.” Kushner also received hundreds of millions of dollars from funds in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Wyden pointed to those funding sources to raise concerns about whether Kushner has improperly leveraged his time in the White House and ties to Trump. He wrote in his letter that Kushner’s funding from mostly foreign sources “creates an appearance that Affinity’s investors are motivated not by commercial interests of seeking a return on investment, but rather by strategic considerations of foreign nationals seeking to funnel money to U.S. individuals with personal connections to former President Trump.”

Don Fox, the former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, said: “The question is whether he is trading on his own business acumen or the fact that he is the son-in-law of the former president who may be president again. Is that illegal? No. Does it look good? No.”

Kushner initially suggested that he would invest a substantial amount of the Saudi money in Israel, portraying it as a natural extension of his prior role as Trump’s Middle East dealmaker. In that role, Kushner vowed to bring Muslims and Jews closer together and helped negotiate the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and four Arab states – a deal now strained by the war in the Gaza Strip. But aside from two known deals, involving an auto company and an insurance firm, more extensive investments haven’t come to fruition.

Kushner has focused, instead, on two countries in the Balkans, Serbia and Albania, as well as deals in the United States.

In Serbia, Kushner’s company signed an agreement in May to transform a onetime national defense complex – bombed in 1999 by U.S.-led NATO forces – into luxury condos, a hotel, offices and shops.

A key player in the Balkan deals is Grenell, who has talked publicly about his role in connecting Kushner with leaders in Serbia and Albania. He served formerly as U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, in addition to working in the Balkans. He is often mentioned as a possible secretary of state if Trump is elected again, which means he could be dealing with foreign officials he is seeking to cement deals with right now. Grenell did not respond to an interview request.

The deal to renovate the site in Belgrade was sensitive, because of its history as a NATO bombing target, and was negotiated in secret. After the May announcement of the deal, Serbia’s minister of construction, transportation and infrastructure minister, Goran Vesic, said that Serbia had chosen a “reputable American company” to undertake the work. The press release said that Affinity Partners had obtained a 99-year lease on the land. The site will also include a memorial “dedicated to all the victims of NATO aggression from 1999,” the release said.

But Kushner has already faced some pushback. The company’s Serbia plans have led to street protests. And after he shared “early design images” on social media, some of the people living nearby the potential Zvernec development were startled by the scale.

“I know tourism brings growth,” said Kostaq Konomi, the head of the nearest village. “But if you are building something new, you are also destroying something.”

A fragile and potentially lucrative property

In Albania, the idyllic property portrayed in Kushner’s renderings is, for now, unfenced land, reachable on foot after the rock-strewn road dead-ends into sand. From there, past a half-mile beach marked with little more than bird footprints, the land begins to rise. Cows nibble on rough hillside grass. Insects buzz around shrubs. Footpaths lead higher yet, to a sun-kissed ridge that, on one side, drops sheerly toward the Adriatic and, on the other, slopes gently toward the lagoon.

On maps, this is called the Vjose-Narte Protected Landscape.

And it is the place where Kushner has inserted himself into a boiling debate in Albania over the need to preserve vs. develop.

That argument is an outgrowth of Albania’s turbulent history. Until 1990, the country had been gripped by a repressive dictatorship. Foreign governments warned against travel. The economy lagged woefully behind Mediterranean neighbors. Perhaps the lone upside, as the Iron Curtain fell, was that Albania found itself – almost by accident – with a bounty of untouched natural beauty.

Determining how much of that nature to keep has been a primary challenge for Rama, who has held power since 2013. Last year, working with environmental groups and Patagonia, Rama’s government made a national park out of one of Europe’s only free-flowing rivers. Descending from a mountain, the Vjosa River cuts through gorges and then meanders to the coastline. Rama called the park an “inheritance for future generations.”

But Rama has also led a push for rapid development. His government has offered tax breaks and other incentives for investors. Under his watch, up and down the coastline, builders have turned once-quiet areas of pine trees or sand dunes into hotels, apartments and villas. More recently, as Albania has developed a reputation as a budget destination, he has made the case that the country also needs “high-profile tourism that attracts big consumers.”

Rama and his office did not respond to requests for comment. But in a statement last year, he said that “what 400 yachts can generate is equal to what can be earned from 40,000 low-cost visitors.”

Initially, neither Kushner nor anybody else from Trump’s orbit seemed a likely partner. Before Trump’s election in 2016, Rama predicted in one interview that Trump would “hurt” democracy globally. He said in another that Trump’s rhetoric against Muslims was “embarrassing America in the eyes of the world.” But after Trump became president, the two men met at least three times. A report issued earlier this year by House Democrats – titled “White House for Sale,” about alleged efforts by foreign nations to influence Trump – included a section on a trip that Rama made to Washington during which he and other Albanian officials stayed at the Trump International Hotel.

The report said that Albania’s three main political parties, including Rama’s Socialist Party, hired U.S.-based lobbyists “with close ties to then-President Trump” to influence his administration.

Elton Skendaj, the Albanian-born director of the democracy and governance program at Georgetown University, said that Rama is “very transactional,” and in that way a natural partner for Trump.

“Whoever is in the White House will be Albania’s best friend,” Skendaj said. “And they’ll do their best to host him. People like Trump or Kushner – Albanians would not tell you, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you’re breaking all these democratic norms’ or ‘You’re corrupt.’ They’ll be like, ‘Okay, you’re welcome here.’ They know how to work with you.”

Polls show Albania is one of the most pro-American nations in the world. And its government, long seen by Western authorities as being plagued by corruption, views foreign investment as a way to bolster its credibility.

Albania emerged on Kushner’s radar in 2021, when a friend described the country as a must-see. Kushner went. He met with Rama during that trip, he said in an interview, but didn’t discuss any particular business ventures. The tourism boom in Albania remained in his mind, however, when he returned to the United States and thought about “geographies that are on the ascent.”

So Kushner dispatched his business partner, Abehsera, to look into ideas for the country.

Kushner recalled Rama saying that “if you can develop something very special, I am open-minded.”

Kushner was back in Albania last year, he said, spending several days with his wife, Ivanka, marveling at the restaurants. Along with Grenell, he visited a national museum with Rama, according to photographs published in Albanian media.

Several Albanian politicians said that Rama has long floated the idea of developing Sazan Island, a former military outpost five miles off the coast. That area has fewer environmental considerations because its land is not designated as protected.

With Zvernec, Abehsera said the possibility of developing there was first raised by the Kastrati Group, which dominates several key industries in Albania, including oil. Abehsera said the Kastrati Group would potentially be “our local building partner on the ground.” Officials at the Kastrati Group did not respond to an interview request.

Albania has not yet received an official proposal from Kushner for the project in Zvernec. But Kushner said that Rama has personally seen the renderings and got “very, very excited.”

Environmentalists counter that this coastal area is one of the most important habitats in Europe, remarkable for its natural diversity: It has sand dunes that host loggerhead sea turtles and a lagoon that serves as a haven for water birds. A 2021 report from Andrej Sovinc, an expert on protected areas working on behalf of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said the lagoon had “significant conservation value at the national and even global scales.”

The area slated for development is just eight miles to the south of the mouth of the Vjosa. Aleko Miho, a biologist at the University of Tirana, says the two spots are linked: The river over centuries formed the lagoon by oscillating and dumping sediment. In his report, Sovinc raised the idea that the lagoon, too, should be made a national park – a higher status than it now holds. Sovinc recalled that Albanian officials, in meetings, called such a move unnecessary; the area, after all, was already protected.

Environmentalists say the government has a history of playing loose with the nation’s conservation rules. The nearby airport, under construction and scheduled to open next year, had also been part of the protected area. Just before construction crews broke ground, the government redrew and shrank the boundaries.

“It is a protection on paper but not in reality,” said Ulrich Eichelmann, the founder of Riverwatch, an organization that helped campaign for the national park.

Then, in February, as NGOs protested outside the parliament, the government changed the law on protected areas – removing a potential obstacle for Kushner’s plans.

Several lawmakers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of legislation, said that the government had not changed the law specifically for Kushner. They said that some Albanian politicians own land in protected areas and stand to benefit from the changes. Rama said on social media that the move was part of Albania’s “ambitious path for sustainable development.”

Albania’s minister for tourism and the environment, Mirela Kumbaro Furxhi, said in an interview that “all of Albania is open for potential development.” She said that a small country can’t afford to protect wide swaths of land – officially, more than 21 percent of Albania’s territory – to prevent economic progress. In the past few decades, young people have streamed out of the country, in search of jobs elsewhere. Many of the villages around Kushner’s potential sites are inhabited almost entirely by retirees and could benefit from an influx of job opportunities.

If many environmentalists had their way, Kumbaro said, people around Vjosa would have to “abandon the region forever and to have only the birds.”

Can a resort and ecosystem coexist?

The renderings, and the plans drawn up by Affinity, spell out one vision for the future of this area. Abehsera said that several thousand people will have jobs, both in construction and in working at the hotels and villas. He said that the “the environmental considerations are massive” and that the quality of the lagoon might even improve, as parts had been used for agriculture and developers intend to perform some cleanup work.

“We’re going to enhance the holistic qualities of the existing ecosystem,” he said, adding that the flamingos and pelicans would be protected.

Joni Vorpsi, 28, an ornithologist who works for the Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania, fears that won’t be possible. As he walked along the lagoon one morning, carrying his tripod and binoculars, he described what might happen in the coming years – all while pausing to point out the black-winged stilts, the pied avocets and the flamingos, congregating in a group of more than 1,000. Kushner’s development, Vorpsi said, would mean years of construction, new roads and infrastructure work to ensure an energy supply, plus increased traffic from the nearby airport, going where few cars have previously gone.

“It can’t coexist,” he said. “Even if you try to be cautious, there is just so much disturbance.”

Not everybody cares about birds, he acknowledged. But to him, they are an indicator of a healthy environment – of nature in balance. They feed on the plants in the lagoon, and in turn that spares the lagoon from being sucked dry by vegetation.

There are still some obstacles to the resort becoming reality – including in Washington.

Kushner and Ivanka – Trump’s daughter – have both said they don’t plan to rejoin the White House if Trump is elected again. But Kushner has left himself an out, noting in various interviews that his life has not always worked as he planned, such as when Trump brought him to the White House.

If Kushner were to return to the White House, his investment activities could create the appearance of conflicts. As a government employee, he would have to release financial details on his privately owned company that he currently is not required to reveal.

Kushner has structured his company in a way that avoids most disclosure, and he has long stymied efforts by Democrats who want to learn more about his financial dealings.

The one thing Kushner is willing to predict is the trajectory for Albania. He says the country is “primed for something special.” The prices are reasonable, he said. The people are friendly.

“My time in Albania definitely made me feel that it was a place on the ascent,” he said.