Albania Freezes $195M in Kushner Resort Land Deal as 'Flamingo Revolution' Grows

Albania’s anti-corruption prosecutor SPAK has frozen the bank accounts of Albania Land Development, the Qatari-owned firm that assembled beachfront plots for a roughly $4 billion luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. The freeze — reportedly covering about $195 million — is part of a property-fraud probe into how titles in the protected Vjosa-Narta wetland were acquired, how the area lost its protected status via special 2024 legislation, and why normal public-tender rules were bypassed. The action landed amid a week of nationwide protests dubbed the ‘Flamingo Revolution,’ named for the birds that inhabit one of the Mediterranean’s last intact coastal wetlands.

The project spans two sites: a €1.4 billion Aman eco-resort on Sazan, a former military island granted strategic investor status by a committee Prime Minister Edi Rama chairs (with tax holidays and state-funded infrastructure), and a larger mainland development near Zvernec totaling up to 10,000 rooms and villas. Critics see geopolitics rather than tourism: Affinity Partners is funded largely by Gulf sovereign wealth, including a $2 billion Saudi commitment approved over its own screening panel’s objections, and Kushner remains an informal Trump adviser. Rama has straddled the controversy — endorsing the investigation into local sellers while calling the asset freeze ‘arbitrary,’ defending the investors, and dismissing the protests as Trump-opposition theater.

The story escalated after Ivanka Trump described Sazan on a podcast as a ‘beautiful 1,400-hectare private island’ the couple discovered while swimming — a framing many Albanians took as erasure of state-held land, prompting the nickname ‘Trump Island.’ Meanwhile, clearing work began at Zvernec in late April before environmental reviews were complete, and the case is becoming a test of whether the EU will hold an accession candidate accountable for bending law and environmental protections to accommodate a politically connected foreign investor.