Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump disembark Air Force One in Maryland in July 2020. Photo / Al Drago, The New York Times
The protests, raising concerns about conservation, transparency and the project’s ties to the Trump family, began on Sunday in the Albanian capital, Tirana.
Thousands of Albanians are protesting a luxury resort planned for a pristine strip of the Mediterranean coastline and backed by US President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
The protests, raising concerns about conservation, transparency and the project’s ties to the Trump family, began on Sunday after heavy machinery began working on the project, which has two parts: one beachfront development along the Adriatic coast and another resort on the nearby uninhabited Sazan Island.
In an interview that published the same day, Ivanka Trump spoke about the project at length, calling it “the culmination of all of my experience in real estate”.
“It’s an unbelievable, beautiful 1400-hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean,” she said on David Senra’s podcast, describing how she and Kushner became aware of the area. “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.”
Protesters in Albania, including environmentalists, say the coastal land targeted for development is among the Mediterranean’s most pristine and ecologically important, encompassing centuries-old coastal dunes, lagoons, forests and marshlands that serve as habitats for diverse wildlife.
The project is a “wipeout of nature”, said Joni Vorpsi, a protester and member of the Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania.
Taulant Bino of the Albanian Ornithological Society said the area is a “bird corridor” that is “extremely important” for migratory species. A project with tall buildings “doesn’t fit with the status of the protected area at all because it has nothing to do with the landscape we have inherited in the area”, he said.
The protests continued into a fifth day on Thursday, with signs criticising Trump and Kushner, and others targeting Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who is a member of Trump’s Board of Peace.
“No tourist paradise is built on destroyed lives,” one sign read. Another showed the Kushner-Trump couple walking a dog with Rama’s face plastered on.
Activists argue that the Albanian government is changing or skirting environmental laws for their personal gain. Another poster showed the Albanian leader handing Ivanka Trump a key labelled “Zverneci”, saying “Enjoy it!”
“Albania is not for sale,” said Sidorela Vatnikaj, an activist at the protest on Thursday. She said the demonstrators are aiming to “abolish the project that was not public” and “abolish this ideology when one autocrat can decide what he can do with our land and our rights”. She also wants the government to roll back laws that allow construction on protected land.
“We are here to protest for our rights but also to build a collective imagination that another Albania without autocrats is possible,” she said.
Rama has taken to social media to defend the project and chide its critics.
He has described the project as the boost that Albania, a former communist state, needs to become a main player in the luxury tourist industry that is economically benefiting others parts of the Balkans.
“We don’t want, and we can’t be a low-cost tourist destination,” Rama said in 2023. “To put the record straight, what 400 yachts can generate is equal to what can be earned from 40,000 low-cost visitors.”
Representatives for Ivanka Trump and Kushner’s Affinity Projects did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Among the most sensitive tracts set for development is the ecologically sensitive coastal area of Zvernec.
That segment of the Albanian coast has been off-limits to developers as a protected landscape, with signs even prohibiting camping, a 2024 Washington Post trip to the site showed. The Albanian government in 2024 amended the law to make room for high-end tourism facilities of “5 stars or more”.
On Thursday, Rama posted a video of the firm that he said “Zvernec investors have contracted” for landscape architecture, saying the “star team” will “never bring negative consequences for nature, instead, they will bring a level of harmony” between nature and development. He alluded to investors’ “4 billion Euros that certain forces are doing their best to be removed from Albania’s hands”.
Protesters are calling for more transparency over the involvement of Affinity Partners, the private equity company Kushner created after his father-in-law lost his reelection bid in 2020. Kushner obtained US$3 billion ($5.1b) in funding, according to the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including $2b from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Though Kushner initially suggested that he would put much of the money into development in Israel, he has turned some attention to Balkan countries, including Serbia.
Late last year, Kushner’s private equity firm planned to help develop – then pulled out of – a $500 million luxury project with a Trump-branded hotel, high-end apartments, stores and a museum on a former Yugoslav military headquarters in Serbia’s capital. Amid controversy over cultural heritage protections and allegations of Serbian corruption, Affinity Partners stepped away from the project, saying in a statement that “meaningful projects should unite rather than divide”.
The Albanian government gave preliminary approval to the Kushner-proposed Sazan Island project in late 2024.
In an interview with The Post in 2024, Kushner acknowledged that he benefited from relationships developed while in government, but distinguished between selling 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.”