What to Know About the Jared Kushner–Backed Luxury Resort Drawing Protests in Albania
· Time
A planned luxury hospitality development on the Albanian coast backed by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is facing major backlash and stirring mass protests in the country.
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The roughly $1.6 development would involve building hotels, apartments, villas, and a marina in the Narta Lagoon area on the country’s western coast, which is home to a wildlife reserve, as well as on the uninhabited island of Sazan, formerly a communist-era military base.
Kushner is the founder and chief executive of the investment firm Affinity Partners, which is behind the plans for the Albanian luxury development.
Environmental groups have opposed the project, warning that it threatens a host of long-protected habitats and species, such as the Mediterranean monk seal, the Loggerhead sea turtle, and many endangered bird species, including Dalmatian pelicans and flamingos, according to BirdLife International.
Earlier this week, Albania’s anti-corruption prosecution body, SPAK, announced that it has launched a probe regarding the project, including controversial legislative changes made in 2024 that impacted the area’s protected status and how ownership of the land was obtained.
Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama, however, has strongly supported the resort as an opportunity to stoke Albania's rise as a tourist destination.
“There is no chance for this investment to stop as long as I am here,” said Rama.
Groundwork on the development began late last week, sparking mounting public resistance against the project.
Thousands have taken to the streets in the Albanian capital Tirana this week. Protests, which entered their sixth day on Friday, are also planned near the site of the development.
Many protesters sported flamingo imagery or props. The birds, for whom the preserve on the Adriatic coast is a key migratory pitstop, have become a symbol of the fierce opposition to the resort—which some have deemed the “flamingo revolution.”
Other demonstrators held signs protesting the project’s ties to the Trump Administration, Kushner, and Albanian leadership.
Rama offered to meet with opponents of the project and “discuss solutions” earlier this week, but was rebuffed.
“From start to finish there has been a total lack of transparency,” Aleksandr Trajce, the executive director of Protection and Preservation of the Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), the country’s main conservation group, told to The Guardian. “We have seen no public consultation or public documentation regarding permits, and so now what we are saying is, if they remove the bulldozers, remove the fence and restore the habitats to what they were, then we can start talking.”
Another protestor said to The Washington Post that the development would be a “wipeout of nature,” while another told the outlet that “Albania is not for sale.”
Ivanka Trump, Kushner’s spouse and the daughter of the President, spoke this week about how she and her husband came across the planned site for the project and were inspired to pursue the business opportunity.
“It’s an unbelievable, beautiful, 1,400-hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean,” she said while speaking with the podcaster David Senra. “We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that’s how we found it. We swam to the island, we went on a hike — barefoot all the way, up to the top. And we were just captivated. And it stayed with us ever since.”
Trump told Senra that she and Kushner have pursued the “massive-in-scale” development with “a lot of restraint and care,” citing the land’s beauty.
This is not the first time Kushner’s business dealings through Affinity Partners, which he created after Trump left the White House following his loss in the 2020 election, have drawn controversy.
In December, his firm pulled out of a planned luxury hotel project in Serbia after it sparked protests—and corruption charges.
Four government officials were charged with abuse of power and forgery in connection with the project hours before Affinity Partners announced the company was pulling out. The officials have denied any impropriety.
A spokesperson for the firm said at the time that it was pulling out of the deal because “meaningful projects should unite rather than divide and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the city of Belgrade.”
Speaking to Politico during the European-Western Balkans summit in Montenegro on Friday, Rama again defended the planned development in his country. "If it was not Jared, they would not give a s— about what is happening in Albania," the Prime Minister said.
TIME has reached out to Affinity Partners for comment.