Albania Freezes Accounts Behind Kushner-Backed Resort as Protests Grow

Albanian anti-corruption prosecutors have frozen the bank accounts of Albania Land Development, the company that bought beachfront plots for a luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner, as protests against the project entered their seventh consecutive day. The preventive seizure was ordered by SPAK, the Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organised Crime, in a property-fraud investigation into land titles in a protected coastal wetland.

Two projects, one coastline

The development is two ventures presented as one ambition. Off the bay of Vlora lies Sazan, Albania's largest island at about 5.7 square kilometres; in December 2024 a Strategic Investment Committee chaired by Prime Minister Edi Rama granted strategic investor status to Atlantic Incubation Partners, a firm affiliated with Kushner's Affinity Partners, for an Aman-branded eco-resort valued at about 1.4 billion euros. The larger venture sits on the mainland near Zvernec, where Albania Land Development assembled the plots now under investigation; conservationists describe the Pishe Poro-Narta protected landscape as one of the Mediterranean's last largely intact coastal wetlands, home to flamingos and more than 200 migratory bird species. PPNEA-BirdLife Albania's Joni Vorpsi has described a project of around 10,000 hotel rooms and villas that he said would "completely destroy that wild region."

The freeze and the money behind it

Albania Land Development is owned by the Syrian-born, Qatari-nationalised brothers Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat. One source put the frozen sum at about $195 million, a figure SPAK has not confirmed. SPAK said on 2 June it had opened a case into the 2024 changes to the protected status of the Vjosa-Narta area, how ownership was obtained and the origin of the funds. That year parliament passed special legislation reclassifying Sazan and the Pishe Poro-Narta area to permit large-scale development, the move that made the strategic investor designation possible.

Protests and political fallout

Excavators and dump trucks moved onto the mainland site in late April, cutting access roads and felling pine, without a completed environmental impact assessment or public consultation. BirdLife International reported that construction had sealed one of the two channels linking the Narta Lagoon to the sea. Protests gathered at the end of May after developers ringed the site with barbed wire and blocked access to the beach; on 30 May, footage circulated of private security guards punching and dragging a protester.

Authorities revoked the licences of two security firms and arrested a 32-year-old guard. Thousands then rallied outside Rama's office in Tirana under the banner "Albania is not for sale," demanding the project's cancellation. Rama has refused to halt the plan, condemned the guards' conduct as "disgusting" and said the investors were "within their rights." The European Commission has tied the project to Albania's accession talks, warning that it should not undermine the closing benchmarks for Chapter 27 on environment and climate.