The government of Albania has taken a step in currying favor with the second Donald Trump presidency by granting strategic investor status to a company tied to Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former U.S. President Donald Trump. The ambitious project will transform Sazan, a once-isolated Mediterranean island and former military outpost, into an opulent resort destination.
On December 30, the country’s Strategic Investment Committee, chaired by Prime Minister Edi Rama, greenlit the proposal by Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC for this 45-hectare venture. Backed by an eye-popping planned investment of €1.4 billion ($1.4 billion), the development promises to reshape Sazan into a premier Mediterranean retreat, fusing untamed natural beauty with cutting-edge luxury.
But would the deal have gone through should Donald Trump had not won last November’s election?
Virginia Canter, who served as White House ethics lawyer during the Obama and Clinton administrations and also an ethics adviser to the International Monetary Fund, told the New York Times, ““It all looks like favoritism, like they are providing access to Kushner because they want to be on the good side of Trump.”
Last March, Jared Kushner released a few images of one of the projects on Twitter saying, “Excited to share some early design images for development projects we have been creating for the Albanian coast and downtown Belgrade.”
One of the planned projects is the possible development of an island off the coast of Albania, which would transform it into a luxury tourist destination.
Another plan is for a luxury hotel, as well as 1,500 residential units and a museum for the Serbian capital Belgrade. If approved, this would be built at the site of the long-vacant former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army that was destroyed in a NATO attack against Serbian forces during the Yugoslavian civil war in 1999, according to a member of Parliament in Serbia and Mr. Kushner’s company.
A third plan is for Albania’s Zvërnec peninsula where a 1,000-acre coastal area in the south of the country that is part of the resort community known as Vlorë. Several hotels and hundreds of villas would be built there if that plan is approved.
“We are very excited,” Jared Kushner said in an interview with the New York Times. “We have not finalized these deals, so they might not happen, but we have been working hard and are pretty close.”
Some people think that Jared Kushner is getting foreign governments to fast-track his proposals because of his relationship with Donald Trump.
“No one is ‘giving’ me deals,” Jared Kushner told the New York Times. “I operate fairly meticulously, and these investments will create a lot of value for the local communities, our partners and our investors.”
