Albanians are filling the streets carrying pink flamingos.
The symbol represents the Vjosa-Narta wetland, on Albania’s southern coast, one of the country’s most important ecological sites: a fragile landscape of lagoons, dunes, pine forest, turtle nesting grounds, and bird habitat. It is also the site of a proposed luxury development linked to Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka Trump.
A second Trump-Kushner-linked project targets Sazan Island, a former military island off the coast of Vlora. Sazan is state-owned land, administered by Albania’s Ministry of Defence and located inside the Sazan-Karaburun National Park, the country’s only combined marine and terrestrial national park. Yet Ivanka Trump has promoted it publicly as a future “private island” destination in the Mediterranean.
Together, the projects have become a national scandal: a story of opaque companies, disputed land titles, altered protections, public assets, private security, environmental destruction, and a government determined to press ahead.
The Deal
The Albanian government has not announced a full sale or privatisation of Sazan Island. Officials insist that Sazan remains public property and that the state will remain a stakeholder in any future arrangement.
But the public record shows that the state has already moved to make the project possible.
At the end of 2024, Albania’s Strategic Investment Committee — chaired by Prime Minister Edi Rama — granted strategic investor status to Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC, a company linked to Jared Kushner, for a proposed luxury resort on Sazan Island. The project was presented as a major tourist investment, worth roughly €1.4 billion, with promises of jobs, infrastructure, and international prestige.
Strategic investor status gives the project political priority, special treatment, and access to accelerated state procedures. It also opens the door to state participation through public entities such as the Albanian Investment Corporation.
In June 2026, BIRN reported that a draft Council of Ministers’ decision would transfer more than 90 percent of Sazan Island — roughly 5.2 million square metres, including land and buildings — from the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation. The stated purpose of the transfer was the “Tourist Resort – Sazan Island” project. The draft would place the island into the Real Estate Fund for Strategic Investments.
The government said the document had only been circulated for consultation and had not been implemented. It also denied privatisation, saying the move would prepare negotiations while protecting the state’s interests.
The Strip Between Lagoon and Sea
The second project lies near Zvërnec, in the Vjosa-Narta protected landscape. This is the strip of land between the Narta Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea.
In 2024, Jared Kushner announced plans for a major development in the area, alongside the Sazan Island proposal and a separate project in Belgrade that was later abandoned after protests in Serbia. The Albanian project envisioned thousands of accommodation units along one of the country’s most sensitive coastal ecosystems.
In 2021, the Albanian government downgraded the protection status of the Pishë Poro–Narta area and reduced the protected zone by more than 5,000 hectares. In March 2024, amendments to Albania’s protected-area legislation opened the way for five-star tourism developments in areas that had previously been more tightly protected.
The company behind the Zvërnec development, Zvërnec South Adriatic Development, was registered in August 2024. Within eight months, BIRN reported, it had secured two development permits. These permits were not immediately published. Local environmental groups and protected-area officials complained that work began without clear public information, transparent documentation, or proper consultation.
In late April 2026, heavy machinery appeared in Pishë Poro. Trees were removed, land was flattened, and fences went up. The barbed wire blocked access to the beach and, according to residents, enclosed ancestral properties that remain subject to unresolved ownership disputes.
Environmental organisations described the works as a massacre of the landscape. Protesters described them as a land grab.
The Network Behind the Beach
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and its Albanian outlet Reporter.al. found that the company behind the Zvërnec project was structured through an opaque Dutch trust arrangement, with ultimate beneficial ownership hidden from the Albanian public. US and regional reporting has linked the project to Jared Kushner and to Qatari investors from the Al-Khayyat business family.
BIRN also identified a local network surrounding the project: businessmen and intermediaries connected to disputed land claims, politically powerful corporate interests, and long-running court battles.
Landowners in the area told BIRN that they fear being dispossessed. Some said they discovered the project not through a proper public process, but when machinery and fencing appeared on the land.
Yet the permits remained in force, and work began.
Sazan: From Military Island to Luxury Enclave
Sazan Island is state property, sits inside a national park, and has a military history. And according to reporting by BIRN, its surrounding waters contain serious risks from unexploded ordnance: artillery shells, anti-submarine mines, and other munitions left from decades of militarisation.
That has not stopped the resort proposal.
In late 2024, Albania granted strategic investor status to the Kushner-linked company for Sazan. In 2026, BIRN reported that the Albanian Ministry of Defence had been assigned responsibility for clearing unexploded ordinance from the island and its surrounding waters — effectively preparing dangerous public military terrain for private tourist use.
The issue is not only whether tourists could one day be safe there, but why public institutions should prepare a former military zone for a luxury resort linked to the family of the sitting US president. Moreover, turning a public, protected, and former military land into a luxury resort would convert all three into an exclusive enclave.
Bulldozers, Barbed Wire and Private Security
In late May 2026, a fence appeared near Vjosa-Narta. Barbed wire blocked access to the coast. Protesters, residents, and environmental activists confronted private security guards at the site. Videos circulated showing violence against protesters. The police later opened investigations, and the Albanian government criticised the conduct of private security personnel.
Prime Minister Edi Rama defended the project, promised that the lagoon would not be touched, and insisted the investment would go ahead — even though the environmental impact assessment had not been completed, local communities had not been meaningfully consulted, and protected land had already been opened to exploitation.
In effect, Albanians were asked to trust the investors after the bulldozers had arrived.
The Rule of Law Question
The projects also raise a rule-of-law question. Albania is seeking membership in the European Union. EU accession requires environmental protections, transparent property rights, independent institutions, and credible anti-corruption safeguards. The Trump-Kushner projects expose weaknesses in all of these areas.
Meanwhile, Albania’s Special Anti-Corruption Structure has opened investigations related to the acquisition of land titles and legislative changes concerning protected areas. Court documents show a series of property transactions carried out between November 2025 and May 2026, during which ownership of land along the project’s footprint was transferred from Artur Shehu, whom prosecutors have identified in separate proceedings concerning organised crime allegations a businessman known for years by the authorities as an influential figure in Albanian organized crime, and associated individuals to the company “Albania Land Development”, under the ownership of billionaire brothers Ramez and Mohamad Al-Khayyat, who have been presented as the project’s investors.
Judicial sources indicate that over the course of these rushed transactions, property prices were inflated by a factor of 22, a spike that has led the Prosecution to examine a potential money-laundering scheme operating within the framework of an organized criminal group. Court documents further suggest that land deals may have been facilitated by individuals connected to the Kastrati Group, raising new questions about possible collusion with powerful domestic business interests. In June 2026, anti-corruption prosecutors froze the bank accounts of Albania Land Development as part of the investigation into alleged fraudulent property titles.
These investigations should proceed without political interference. It is a test of whether Albania’s institutions serve the public — or the investors.
Albanians Protest the Trump Family Business Model
A project linked to the sitting US president’s family cannot be treated as a normal private investment. It carries diplomatic weight even when it is formally private. Rama has presented the projects as proof of Albania’s ability to attract elite investment. That political value makes scrutiny more urgent, not less.
Protesters in Tirana and Vlora are demanding the basics: local consent, public documents, completed environmental assessments, transparent ownership records, and a coastline that is not carved into exclusive resorts.
The pink flamingo has become a symbol because the lagoon cannot defend itself. Nor can the turtle nesting sites, the dunes, the pines, or the waters around Sazan. The protests began when the public institutions withdrew.
What Should Happen Now
Their demands are clear.
The Albanian government should halt all works in Vjosa-Narta and any transfer connected to Sazan until the full record is public, including through thorough consultation, parliamentary scrutiny, and independent legal review. That will require the publication of all permits, contracts, memoranda, draft decisions, environmental assessments, beneficial ownership records, and strategic-investor files.
It should complete the environmental impact assessment before works continue, resolve disputed property claims before development rights are exercised, and allow SPAK’s investigations to proceed without political interference.
Private security companies accused of violence should be investigated, damaged habitats should be restored, and the Albanian public should have the final say over whether its coast, wetlands, and islands become luxury assets for the Trump-Kushner network and its partners.
The pink flamingos that now fill Albanian streets embody a nation's refusal to surrender its natural heritage to foreign oligarchs and their local enablers. As the bulldozers idle and the investigations proceed, one truth remains unassailable: the Vjosa-Narta wetlands, the waters surrounding Sazan Island, and the dignity of the Albanian people are not commodities to be traded in the corridors of power. They are legacies to be protected. And as the protesters carrying their pink flamingos make clear, Albania will not be sold—not to Trump, not to Kushner, not to anyone.
