Jared Kushner (Wikipedia)
Jared Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump’s $1 billion Albanian real estate deal could be in trouble. The Independent reported that the couple is in hot water with the locals who have gone to court asserting they want to take their land away to build a new luxury resort in the country. Some Albanians think their government is giving the Kushners special treatment because of the possibility that Ivanka’s father Donald Trump could win reelection to the presidency.
“They are trying to take from us what is ours,” Albanian local Bledar Alexandros Konomi was quoted as saying about Jared Kushner’s plan to appropriate their land.
Opposition to the plan is not new. In April a Serbian opposition group called the Kreni-Promeni (Make Changes) Movement came out against the project because it would tear down what they feel is a historic building and cause changes to the city’s character, a former defense ministry site that was bombed in the Yugoslavian civil war.
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“It’s one of the pearls of pre-war architecture,” Stefanovic, who is the deputy president of the Party of Freedom and Justice in Serbia’s parliament, told The Daily Beast at the time. “There is the emotional aspect: This site was bombed by NATO in 1999. Most Serbs believe this site should not be desecrated in any way.”
However, in May Goran Vesić, Serbia’s minister of construction, transport and infrastructure, “We will restore the building 25 years after it was destroyed in the bombing. In a quarter of a century, no one, before this government, thought of renovating the complex. When this area is revitalized, it will contribute to the development of Belgrade and Serbia.”
In March, the New York Times reported that these business deals are based on relationships Kushner began while he served in a senior position at the White House during the Trump administration.
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.”
According to the report in the Times, 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.”
