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Albania Is Not for Sale: Kushner's $4 Billion Resort Triggers 'Flamingo Revolution', Asset Freeze and an EU Warning
https://www.yacnews.com/albania-is-not-for-sale-kushners-4-billion-resort-triggers-flamingo-revolution-asset-freeze-and-an-eu-warning/No "PERFECT PHONE CALLS" ???
YAC News (1)
Anti-corruption prosecutors have frozen developer accounts as people nationwide demand the cancellation of a Trump family-linked megaproject carved from protected wetlands.
Albania's "Flamingo Revolution" is testing how far a government will go to protect a foreign investor's interests, and whether the EU will hold it accountable.
Albanian anti-corruption prosecutors froze the bank accounts of Albania Land Development, the company that bought beachfront plots for a luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner, as national protests against the project entered their seventh consecutive day. The preventive seizure was ordered by SPAK, the Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organised Crime, as part of a property-fraud investigation into how land titles in a protected coastal wetland were acquired and how the area was stripped of its protected status. Albania Land Development is owned by the Syrian, nationalized Qatari brothers Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who recently bought the plots in Zvernec, near the southern city of Vlora. One source put the frozen sum at about $195 million transferred for the land, a figure SPAK has not confirmed.
SPAK confirmed on 2 June that it had opened a case into the changes made in 2024 to the protected status of the Vjosa-Narta area and into how ownership of the land was obtained. Prosecutors said they would also examine how officials bypassed the normal public-tender system and the origin of the funds used to buy the land titles, in an area where ownership has been disputed since the collapse of communism in the 1990s. In 2024, the Albanian Parliament passed special legislation reclassifying Sazan and the Pishe Poro-Narta area to permit large-scale development, the move that made the strategic investor designation possible; opposition parties and environmental groups argued the changes were written to accommodate Kushner-linked investors. One administrator of Albania Land Development, Redi Struga, has reportedly been subject to searches.
snip
Affinity Partners is not US money in any ordinary sense. Kushner set up the firm in 2021, days after leaving the White House, with no prior private equity experience, and it is funded largely by Gulf sovereign wealth. The largest single backer is Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which committed $2 billion in 2021 over the written objections of its own screening panel. That panel flagged the firm's inexperience, an asset management fee it judged excessive, the kingdom bearing most of the risk, and "public relations risks" tied to Kushner's role as a senior adviser to Trump, and called the firm's operations unsatisfactory; the fund's board, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, overruled the panel and approved the deal.
Albanian anti-corruption prosecutors froze the bank accounts of Albania Land Development, the company that bought beachfront plots for a luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner, as national protests against the project entered their seventh consecutive day. The preventive seizure was ordered by SPAK, the Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organised Crime, as part of a property-fraud investigation into how land titles in a protected coastal wetland were acquired and how the area was stripped of its protected status. Albania Land Development is owned by the Syrian, nationalized Qatari brothers Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who recently bought the plots in Zvernec, near the southern city of Vlora. One source put the frozen sum at about $195 million transferred for the land, a figure SPAK has not confirmed.
SPAK confirmed on 2 June that it had opened a case into the changes made in 2024 to the protected status of the Vjosa-Narta area and into how ownership of the land was obtained. Prosecutors said they would also examine how officials bypassed the normal public-tender system and the origin of the funds used to buy the land titles, in an area where ownership has been disputed since the collapse of communism in the 1990s. In 2024, the Albanian Parliament passed special legislation reclassifying Sazan and the Pishe Poro-Narta area to permit large-scale development, the move that made the strategic investor designation possible; opposition parties and environmental groups argued the changes were written to accommodate Kushner-linked investors. One administrator of Albania Land Development, Redi Struga, has reportedly been subject to searches.
snip
Affinity Partners is not US money in any ordinary sense. Kushner set up the firm in 2021, days after leaving the White House, with no prior private equity experience, and it is funded largely by Gulf sovereign wealth. The largest single backer is Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which committed $2 billion in 2021 over the written objections of its own screening panel. That panel flagged the firm's inexperience, an asset management fee it judged excessive, the kingdom bearing most of the risk, and "public relations risks" tied to Kushner's role as a senior adviser to Trump, and called the firm's operations unsatisfactory; the fund's board, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, overruled the panel and approved the deal.
more ...
SEE ALSO
Trump hotel project canceled in Serbia after protests, investigation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/12/17/serbia-trump-tower-canceled-protests/
https://archive.is/uRA0K
December 2025
Plans to raze the ruins and begin construction on the new Trump project, however, came to a screeching halt earlier this week. On Monday, Kushner’s company said it is backing away. On the same day, Serbian prosecutors filed charges against Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic on suspicion of abusing his office to support the project. Three other officials were also charged for their role in the removal of cultural heritage status for the dilapidated building.
(1) YAC News
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