Outrage in Albania over Kushner-Trump $1.6bn luxury resort – The Latest
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What sparked the protests in Albania over the Kushner-Trump luxury resort?
This is The Guardian.
It's pretty hard to imagine a retreat on the scale you're talking about here, you know, $1.6 billion that would not massively hurt the environment.
An unbelievable, beautiful 1,400 hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean.
Obviously, part of what attracted them to it was this sort of natural splendor. But then they have been bulldozing forests, hired a security firm to keep locals out. And that has sparked a huge amount of anger. It's a government directly selling to Kushner. And it really just blurs the line between the role of a sort of private real estate developer and a geopolitical actor.
From The Guardian's Today In Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoth. There have been huge protests in Albania this week as the daughter of the US President Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, get underway with their plans to develop this private resort on a private island off the coast of Albania in the Mediterranean, as well as along this wild, uninhabited coastline, which has, you know, this great environmental reserves. Chris Michael, our US editor based in London, has been across this. I mean, let's zoom in on Cezanne, this private island. What is the vision of the Kushner-Trump model here?
Well, to hear them describe it, they were on a boat tour with their friend, Nat Rothschild, you know, now the fifth Baron Rothschild, as you do, and discovered this island, swam across it, walked it barefoot, had an amazing experience. connection, almost a sort of spiritual experience with the land to hear Ivanka describe it. She says she walked the lands and she thought about what kind of life it is that she wanted to live. And I guess the conclusion was she wanted to live in a private luxury resort with her husband and rich people who could afford to join her. And so what they want to do is build a luxury retreat. They're calling it an eco retreat, but it's basically a luxury resort. There was talk of 10,000 hotel rooms.
10,000 hotel rooms.
Yes, as per some reporting anyway. The point is, I guess, that this will be a very expensive place to spend your holiday. And it's part of a vision not only for Jared and Ivanka, but for Eddie Rama, the socialist prime minister of Albania, who really wants to develop the coastline of Albania in a similar way to neighbors like Italy, Greece, Croatia. And the way that they want to do that is not by getting, you know, normal middle class or poor people to come visit because Albania has had loads of visitors recently, but by just having a few very rich people in a sort of luxury retreat.
Yeah, in an interview Ivanka Trump gave this week, it was, as you say, this kind of spiritual experience. It was the sort of energy that you might get from someone kind of coming off a five-day ayahuasca retreat in Peru, this sort of spiritual becoming. Because what she will have seen as she walked barefoot along this coastline is this uninhabited home to more than 200 bird species, many endangered flamingos, Dalmatian pelicans. I imagine that's not what Jared and Ivanka were attracted to, given that they planned to basically bulldoze it all down and build this, as you say, kind of mega luxury resort. That is the cause of some of the public anger, isn't it? There's other factors at play that we'll come to politically later.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is a protected environmental area. As you say, it's home to endangered bird species, to a population of monk seals. Obviously, part of what attracted them to it was this sort of natural splendor, but then they have been bulldozing forests. They've just erected a massive concrete wall. barrier with barbed wire, hired a security firm to keep locals out. And that has sparked a huge amount of anger. Some of the people who've shown up to complain have been dragged away by these private security guards. And it's pretty hard to imagine a retreat on the scale you're talking about here, $1.6 billion that would not massively hurt the environment of one of the last wild places in the Mediterranean.
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