"It's a massive project. It involves a 14,000-hectare private island in the heart of the Mediterranean."
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, had been vacationing with Lord Rothschild at his family villa in Corfu in 2021 when the British banker took them on a short yacht trip across the Adriatic to Albania. Edi Rama, Albania's charismatic and controversial prime minister, also came to dine on the yacht.
“We stopped for a swim, that’s basically how we found it,” Ivanka explained on the podcast in late May. “We swam to the island, did a barefoot hike to the top, and we were just mesmerized.”
The couple was so impressed by Sazan Island that they are now preparing to build a $5 billion luxury resort there, as well as in a wetland area opposite it on the mainland.
The Sunday Times can reveal that planning documents for the resort include proposals for a marina capable of holding 350 superyachts, concert venues, a casino, an equestrian centre, a yacht club, a water park and “lagoon gardens” spread over an area the size of 14 football pitches. The documents also show that Ivanka herself is helping to design some parts of the complex.
A source close to the couple said they are investing their own money.
The development, expected to be as large as London's Olympic Park, has caused a political crisis in Albania, as tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the plans, in demonstrations that have lasted almost a month.
A local historian, Auron Tare, who has long known the Albanian prime minister and Rothschild, organized a trip for Ivanka and Kushner to Sazan, Albania’s largest island and state property. There is still a ruined naval base built by Mussolini there, and about 2,000 tourists visit it every day, after Rama opened it to tourists.
Tare had studied the island's history and had drawn up a plan to build a scientific research center around the naval base.
“When I took these people there, that was the idea I explained to them and they really liked it,” he told The Sunday Times.
Later, he presented his plans to Kushner's investment company, Affinity Partners, he said, "and they loved them. They said, 'Yes, this is exactly what we should do.'"
However, this does not appear to be the latest plan. A briefing document for architectural firms wishing to compete to work on the resort, dated November 6th of last year, was leaked to open-source intelligence researcher Eric Czuleger and has been confirmed as authentic by a source close to the project's investors.
Describing the wetlands portion of the development, which will be built first, the document envisions 600 townhouses, 520 villas, 1,400 apartments, 800 hotel rooms, beach clubs along about two and a half miles of shoreline, a golf course, a wellness center, shops, restaurants and a private road to a new airport nearby, with access for helicopters and private jets. Kushner has previously posted an artistic rendering of what the resort could look like on his social media.
The document was drafted by brothers Ramez and Mohammad al-Khayyat, real estate heirs of Qatari-Syrian descent whose developments include an artificial island in Doha built for the World Cup in Qatar. The brothers met Kushner when he dined at one of their restaurants during the 2022 tournament. They have floated the idea of a Trump golf course on the Syrian coast and have lobbied to have U.S. sanctions on Syria lifted after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. The Trump Organization said this year that no deal was in the works with the brothers.
The brothers initially joined the project in Albania as construction contractors and later became full partners, alongside Ivanka and Kushner, as well as Asher Abehsera, a New York real estate developer who has worked with Kushner for several years. Abehsera said in a statement: “Our goal is simple: to celebrate Albania’s natural beauty, create jobs and build something that future generations can be proud of. Its future, ultimately, will be determined by Albania and the Albanian people.” It is understood that Affinity Partners is no longer involved.
A source close to Ivanka and Kushner said that not everything included in the request for proposals will be built. An architectural firm, Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, LAVA, based in Berlin, prepared a masterplan in response to the document, which involved excavating or cutting 6 million cubic meters of earth, a volume one and a half times larger than Wembley Stadium.
LAVA’s plan, dated November 14, includes a private “ultra-luxury enclave” under the Cheval Blanc brand, the hotel group of French luxury giant LVMH, owner of Louis Vuitton, as well as a Cipriani-branded hotel, under the five-star Venetian hotel, and Aman, the luxury resort group. Tobias Walliser, a partner at LAVA, said: “ This was a draft proposal — not a final or approved plan… Our involvement in the project did not continue beyond this stage and we have no information on the current planning.”
It is understood that the plans have moved away from LAVA’s designs and that LVMH, Cipriani and Aman are no longer believed to be involved with the resort. A spokesman for Sazan Real Estate Development LLC, the company developing the project, said in a statement: “Different concepts and directions of work continue to be evaluated…”
Controversy
Environmental activists say the development will destroy one of the last intact deltas in Europe, a haven for the endangered Mediterranean monk seal, sea turtles and hundreds of bird species, including flamingos. Both the wetland and Sazani are protected landscapes under Albanian law. Ministers changed the law in 2024 to make it easier to build luxury hotels there.
Separately, anti-corruption prosecutors in Albania are investigating...
This month, as part of a broader investigation, prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 20 Albanians accused of crimes including drug trafficking and money laundering. One of them is Artur Shehu, a businessman who has lived in Miami since he was shot in a shootout at a bar in the city of Vlora, near the wetlands, in 1999. Prosecutors allege that Shehu was connected to an international trafficking ring that imported cocaine into Europe while laundering money through tourist properties in Albania, including the wetlands area.
A company owned by the Khayyats, Albania Land Development, bought the land from Shehu last year. But prosecutors have frozen 128 million euros the company paid for it in a notary's account, amid allegations that the land was illegally acquired by Shehu. Shehu has previously won court cases over his ownership of the land.
Others listed alongside him in the sale deeds include the daughter of his former lawyer, who is under house arrest pending an appeal over allegations that he forged documents that granted Shehu land in the area, as well as the former president of the Tirana Court of Appeal, who resigned in 2020 ahead of a vetting process designed to remove corrupt judges.
They are not included as suspects in the investigation. There is no suggestion that Ivanka and Kushner, or other resort investors, were aware of the allegations against Shehu. A spokesman for Sazan Real Estate Development said in a statement: “We are not a party to that matter and are not the subject of any investigation. We continue to believe that the underlying land purchases were made legally and in accordance with applicable procedures… [we] will cooperate with any lawful process, as required.”
Shehu’s lawyer told The Times last month that documents proving his ownership of the land came from the national archives, that the allegations against his client were based on unfounded “ rumors, ” and that “the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] has given him a clean bill of health in the U.S.”
Work on the resort is now suspended while an environmental study is carried out.
In its master plan, LAVA acknowledged that a marina “is likely to impact biodiversity.” However, a source close to Ivanka and Kushner said the development would be so environmentally sensitive that flora and fauna would become more abundant, while polluted waters near Vlora would be cleaned up.
Tare, a former basketball teammate of Rama's who has become a critic of construction in Albania's protected areas, believes the Kushners are not to blame.
"As far as I know, it's not their fault [that this has become controversial]," he said. "If the prime minister of the country is telling you, 'Don't worry, calm down, everything is fine,' how would you know otherwise?"
A source close to Kushner and the Khayyats said they have not been contacted by prosecutors regarding the corruption investigation and that their goal is to comply with all laws. They said they have always been clear that if the Albanian people do not want the resort, it will not be built.
In an interview with the Financial Times last month, Rama said: “If it weren’t for Jared Kushner… nobody would care about flamingos, about Albania, about anything. It’s all the hatred for Trump that creates all this scrutiny.”
Krenar Ceno was one of 2,000 soldiers who once lived on the island, in a community that had schools, hospitals and a cinema where propaganda films were shown every week, as well as concrete bunkers designed to withstand a nuclear attack.
Ceno, who now owns a hotel in nearby Vlora, enjoys returning to the island for its peace and quiet. However, he supports Ivanka's plans to develop it.
“Albania has lived under communism, isolated,” he said. “To have an investment from such a powerful family, the family of the president of the most powerful country in the world, would be a privilege.”
His son, who refused to give his name for fear of getting in trouble with the authorities, privately disagreed. ©LAPSI.AL
