Trump's daughter plans to open luxury resort on protected beach in Albania

In a highly produced podcast interview published this week, Ivanka Trump spoke about her latest real estate project - what she described as an "incredible, beautiful 1,400-hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean", as well as about five miles of Albanian coastline earmarked for the construction of resorts and hotels.

But the project supported by the daughter of the president of the United States and her husband, Jared Kushner, includes planned work in a protected natural area on the coast in front of the island. Environmental groups say development is already causing damage to the very landscape that Trump praised.

The luxury development sparked huge demonstrations on the streets of the capital, Tirana, where protesters carried pink cardboard cutouts representing flamingos, whose habitat, according to them, is threatened. It also generated a wider backlash among citizens of Albania, a country that has one of the lowest per capita incomes in Europe.

The European director of the environmental organization BirdLife, Ariel Brunner, said he and other conservationists visited the natural area in early May and found excavators removing sand from the beach and trucks spreading gravel.

"There was no signage, neither in the lagoon where they were opening the road, nor on the beach where the machines were working... there were no signs indicating licenses, authorizations or even who was responsible for the works."

Meanwhile, Albania's prime minister insists that the project has not yet officially started and that its "environmental impact is still being assessed", while continuing to advocate for the development of the country's Adriatic coast.

What is known about the project so far
The first part of the project - the uninhabited Sazan Island - is a former communist-era military base.

"We were on a friend's boat and we stopped to swim. That's how we discovered it. We swam to the island, hiked barefoot to the top and were completely enchanted," Trump told American podcaster David Senra this week, drawing the attention of many Albanians and people from other countries to the project.

The second site - a still untouched strip of beach called Pishë Poro-Narta - lies within a protected environmental area, the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape. The site is home to endangered species such as monk seals, nesting sea turtles and more than 200 species of birds, including flamingos and pelicans.

CNN reached out to Jared Kushner's private equity fund about the project, but was directed to another company, Sazan Real Estate Development LLC, and told that investors are participating in the initiative on a personal basis.

"We are excited about the opportunity to create a world-class destination and make one of the largest private investments in the region's history. Our focus remains on responsible management, environmental improvement, job creation and long-term value creation for local communities," said Asher Abehsera, president of Sazan Real Estate Development LLC, in a statement. "We respect ongoing public and institutional processes and are ready to move forward as they evolve."

Kushner stated at an investment conference last year that while sailing off the coast of Albania in 2021, he welcomed Prime Minister Edi Rama on board for a meeting. A year later, the two spoke again about investment opportunities. In 2024, Kushner published concept art of the project for the Albanian coast on social media.

Critics have repeatedly raised concerns about possible conflicts of interest involving Kushner's private business dealings, as he currently serves as a special envoy for his father-in-law, President Donald Trump. It has received significant support from sovereign wealth funds in countries with which it also has official government relations, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

On Wednesday, Rama confirmed that Kushner and Ivanka Trump are participating in the venture, but stated that the project also brings together a broader group of investors and architects from Japan, Denmark, Turkey, Greece and France.

Rama also declared that "there is still no project" per se and that "the environmental impact is still being studied", when questioned by Isa Soares, from CNN, about the progress of works on the island and in the natural reserve.

"There is no such thing as the American president's family taking over protected areas where flamingos would be killed by them," said Rama, adding that the developer group hired a consultancy to assess the environmental impacts.

The Prime Minister insisted that the project will not "pour concrete over the heads of flamingos", but rather demonstrate that development and nature conservation "can coexist".

Earlier this week, Albania's special anti-corruption body, SPAK, told local media that it had opened an investigation into the project, without providing further details. CNN reached out to the agency for comment, but did not receive a response.

Controversial change in environmental laws
Part of the negative reaction to the project in Albania is linked to a change in the country's environmental legislation, approved in 2024, which now allows the construction of luxury resorts within protected areas. The law now exempts "enterprises of excellence, five stars or more" and related hospitality activities.

"Typically, when very rich people get to do what they want, it's often disguised under public interest arguments, exceptional situations and the like. To explicitly put in the law that luxury resorts are exempt is really impressive," said BirdLife's Brunner. "It is one of the most aggressive pieces of legislation I have seen in the environmental area in my entire career."

The legal change is not aligned with European Union legislation, which has been a point of friction in negotiations for Albania's entry into the bloc.

"We have already expressed our concerns to the Minister of the Environment about possible flaws in this project," a spokesperson for the European Commission told CNN regarding the project in the protected area of Pishë Poro-Narta. "Our concerns are not new... Albania's repeated extension of the law on strategic investments continues to raise concerns about possible environmental impacts, especially in protected areas."

Conservation groups believe that the Albanian government intends to accelerate this venture and other smaller projects before bringing environmental legislation back into line with European Union requirements.

The European Commission spokesperson told CNN that the Albanian Environment Ministry had "committed to suspending construction works". He also noted that anti-corruption investigations conducted by SPAK "apparently go beyond environmental issues."

CNN reached out to Albania's Ministry of the Environment and the country's National Protected Areas Agency for comment.

What the protesters say
Environmentalists and ordinary citizens have been criticizing the project for weeks, demanding access to licenses and demanding that parliamentarians help protect the preserved coastline.

"The project is quite destructive, because it is planned precisely for a protected area, a protected landscape that is one of the most preserved wetlands in the Mediterranean," Melitjan Nezaj, environmental biologist at the Albanian organization Protection and Preservation of the Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), told CNN. "At this time, there are no permits available to the public."

In a statement, PPNEA stated that part of the ecological damage to the sand dunes "is already irreversible" and that the works "have blocked one of the two openings that connect the Narta Lagoon to the sea, interrupting the natural exchange of tides and causing immediate cascading consequences for fish, birds and the entire food chain."

Protesters held demonstrations in the protected area - in front of newly built fences - carrying posters with images of flamingos and loggerhead turtles. Environmental groups have also reported the presence of heavy machinery on the beach, a drill installed on a hill and security guards patrolling the area, although it is unclear whether these elements are directly linked to the Kushner-backed venture.

Large protests also took place in the capital on several days this week, with citizens chanting the slogan: "Albania is not for sale."

BirdLife told CNN that it is not opposed to all types of development on the coast and argued that areas with abandoned or already urbanized buildings would be more suitable candidates for revitalization.

"Some types of nature can coexist with certain types of development; turning an entire island and river delta into a de facto city cannot," Brunner said. "If you physically remove the habitat, everything that lives in it disappears."

As environmental groups and media outlets have not yet had access to the project's permits or planning documents, it is difficult to know exactly how many buildings are planned and in which parts of the protected area they would be constructed. But in her podcast interview, Ivanka Trump emphasized the enormous scale of the undertaking.

"We'll have hotels, resorts, wellness spaces, all of it - the scale is almost intimidating," he said. He later added that the idea of "community" is at the heart of the project. "You can't just impose yourself on a country or a culture; you first need to understand them to act in a beautiful, delicate and meaningful way."

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*With information from Vasco Cotovio, Isa Soares and Olivia Briand, from CNN

Source: CNN