Jared Kushner had better drop out of his Albania project — for his own good! That was the thought that crossed my mind when I read the Reuters newswire piece of July 11, which documented a nasty aspect of the much-discussed and widely protested Albania tourism project sponsored by Jared Kushner and his wife, the daughter of the U.S. President.
So far, the international mainstream media — mostly unfavorable to U.S President Donald Trump — have presented the case as a severe breach of environmental standards endangering the fauna in a pristine area. That is, of course, true, as EU standards were not observed while national environmental legislation aligned with them was watered down two years ago to make projects like this possible. The narrative then shifted to that of the wealthy, powerful, greedy, and arrogant American who imposes his will on a poor, faraway country with no regard for locals or nature. Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders spoke out calling it “global oligarchy” imposing “an environmentally disastrous luxury resort planned by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Qatari billionaire partners in tiny Albania.” This line was followed by many Democrats, including Georgia U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff, who made it a feature of his reelection campaign.
However, the Reuters piece presents Democrats with a much more vulnerable angle: it details that the owners who signed the land-sale contract with the Syrian-Qatari associates of Kushner are fraudsters who obtained the land titles through falsified documents. More ominously, according to the Special Prosecutor’s Office, the main title holder is a major drug lord whose crime network ships cocaine from Latin America to Europe and invests the proceeds in real estate and development in his native Albania. He has chaired half a dozen “narco summits” in the Americas and Europe in recent years; the one in Aruba in 2019 is now under investigation because it was attended by representatives of Prime Minister Rama’s government.
All this has been published in the Albanian press and a few English-language outlets since mid-June. Even a conservative news website with a sharp eye on Albania, the Washington Examiner, published a piece on June 18 titled “As Trump bombs drug cartels, Jared and Ivanka are happy to facilitate the laundering of millions of dollars for them”, calling on President Trump — whose policy of bombing the narcos on land and sea it supports — to rein in his daughter and son-in-law.
Jared Kushner previously got involved in a real estate development project in Serbia but had to abandon it as soon as prosecutors investigating unduly changed laws arraigned the responsible minister and detained several officials after nine months of civic protests against the project. His Affinity Partners announced that they were there “to unite and not to divide the Serbian people.”
The background to his Albania project looks much murkier, if not dirtier. The question remains whether he knew the details when he decided to engage in the project. A fair guess would be that Kushner did not know. He was introduced to the business idea by none other than Prime Minister Edi Rama, so why should he have suspected anything? On the other hand, one can safely assume that Rama — who wants to endear himself to the Trump administration — knew the criminal aspects of the case in detail but was confident he could keep them under wraps. He foresaw neither the civic reaction nor the prosecution’s inquiry into the shady dealings. Now he faces a popular movement demanding his resignation on grounds of general bad governance and democratic backsliding. The tourism project that sparked the movement has almost been forgotten.
Kushner and his wife, however, have a reputation to lose. And his father-in-law, along with the Republican Party, has a midterm election to win. Therefore, they would be well advised to drop out of the Albania project sooner rather than later; preempting also a media and political second wave attack.