Villagers Challenge Kushner Mega Resort as Prosecutors Say Alleged Cocaine Smuggler Forged Deeds
Albanian prosecutors say the deeds he used to sell it were forged.
Jared Kushner’s Sazan Island Resort carries a €1.4 billion price tag for the decommissioned military island, plus a $4.7 billion plan for the surrounding coast. One leaked master plan lays out 600 townhouses, 520 villas, 1,400 apartments, a marina for 350 superyachts, and a golf course across roughly 13 million square feet. Much of that footprint sits on protected wetlands around the Narta Lagoon, where flamingos nest.
Albanian prosecutors have frozen roughly €110 million from the land sale in a notary’s account, blocking the money from reaching the man who sold it.
Artur Shehu, a Miami-based businessman, is wanted in Albania on allegations he laundered drug money and trafficked South American cocaine into European ports. Case files from SPAK, the country’s anti-corruption and organized-crime agency, allege he and associates built a real estate empire using illegally obtained funds and forged ownership documents, “creating false property titles or artificially increasing the size of properties.”
Shehu sold the coastal parcels in April to a company owned by the developers behind the Kushner-backed project. Prosecutors wrote that “reasonable suspicions are formed, based on evidence, that the above-mentioned assets were acquired through the use of forged documents.”
Shehu denies all of it through his lawyer, Kujtim Cakrani. “Nothing that has been alleged regarding Mr. Artur Shehu’s character is true. He is neither a drug trafficker nor a forger of property documents,” Cakrani said, adding that Shehu’s family has owned the land since the Ottoman Empire, more than 100 years ago.
Residents of Zvernec near the site tell a different story. A dozen of them showed Reuters title deeds and tax records they say prove they are the rightful owners, and their lawyer, Kostandin Beko, says they plan to seek a court order to halt the resort. The dispute has ignited what protesters are calling the “Flamingo Revolution,” the biggest social movement in Albania since the fall of communism in 1991, and has drawn the support of Dua Lipa.
Tens of thousands have marched on Prime Minister Edi Rama’s office in Tirana for more than a month, demanding the project’s cancellation and his resignation. Rama is pushing forward: “They are big investors. It’s a historical chance for Albania,” he told the Financial Times. “If it were not Jared Kushner … nobody would give a shit about flamingos, about Albania, about nothing.”
Much of the anger centers on Law 21/2024, an amendment the Albanian Parliament passed last year that carved out an exception in the country’s protected-areas law for five-star tourism developments. Members of the European Parliament have demanded the resort be halted and the law repealed.
The files make no allegation of wrongdoing against Kushner or the resort’s investors. Reuters found no indication that any investor knew of the suspicions about Shehu when they bought the land.
A Sazan Real Estate Development spokesperson said the company believes the acquisitions “were conducted lawfully and in accordance with applicable procedures.”
Kushner walked away from a similar development deal in Belgrade in December after protests and a Serbian corruption indictment against a government minister tied to the project.
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