President Donald Trump and his children have long faced accusations of corruption, as the Republican leader openly and his progeny openly do business with foreign countries despite the appearance of conflicts of interest. Now one of those controversial business deals — a planned resort in Albania that would destroy an ecologically-protected flamingo sanctuary — just saw a plot twist that left a conservative commentator literally laughing out loud.
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“Should we talk about the Albania resort?” The Bulwark’s Will Sommer told his colleague Tim Miller. Sommer was referring to the attempts by Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner to purchase islands in Albania from an alleged mob-linked figure, prompting widespread protests that have threatened Prime Minister Edi Rama’s regime. After reviewing the history of the fight over the Albanian 1,400 hectares, Sommer and Miller described the latest news report: that Artur Shehu, the businessman who sold them the land, never actually owned it in the first place.
“I think these are the highs and lows of doing business in a country like Albania, you know,” Sommer told Miller. “On one hand, maybe you can get them very quickly, the deeds.”
Laughing, Miller told Sommer he “almost spit out my coffee” at the comment “highs and lows of Albania,” then allowed his colleague to continue with his point.
“But on the other, those deeds might not be real,” Sommer warned Miller. “So basically what’s going on here is that there is a village, as I understand it — there’s a village involved here, and the villagers say, ‘Well, no, actually this is our land, you can tell because we all have houses and we live here.’ But he claims, ‘No, I have the deed.’ And so the allegation is that he basically forged the deeds and sold — then he said, ‘Okay, Jared and Ivanka and various Gulf sheikhs, you give me the money and here’s your deed, and now you can build your resort.’”
After Miller expressed disbelief that the Rama administration did not do more to weed out any potential legal issues with the deal, Sommer characterized it as a dispute in which “Jared and Ivanka say, ‘I will enter that on the side of the cocaine trafficker.’” He also pointed out that the issue has harmed Albania’s standing with the European Union, which it wishes to join, both because it threatens wildlife and because security forces beat up a Greek citizen protesting the resort.
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“I don’t think it’s worth it, Albania,” Sommer said, with Miller adding “you gotta feel for the flamingos. Innocent bystanders, all this — they just want their land.”
In June, the UK-based Independent ran a story covered by reporter Zana Cimili about how Albania became involved with the Trump children.
“Albania’s government champions the Adriatic Coast development as a transformative venture for the nation, aiming to boost its high-end tourism sector and support its bid for European Union membership,” Cimili said. “However, the project, which encompasses an abandoned island and a stretch of seafront on Albania’s southern coast, has sparked criticism from environmental groups and detractors of the long-serving Socialist Prime Minister, Edi Rama.” Since late May, Cimili added, “excavators and other heavy machinery have entered the area, opening access routes, digging into the sand, clearing land among pine trees and installing fencing, Environmental groups from Albania and elsewhere in Europe condemned the work, with one prominent local group charging that long-protected habitats are being ‘irreversibly destroyed’…. Albania’s state anti-corruption agency has confirmed it opened an investigation related to the project but has not disclosed details.”
Cimili continued, “The government says the land earmarked for the project is privately owned. But competing claims have emerged questioning the privatization — a common type of legal dispute.”
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