Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner‘s plans to build an exclusive resort on a 1,400-hectare private island in Albania has hit two significant roadblocks after thousands of locals launched public protests against the project—just as reports emerged that local prosecutors are investigating the development.
It was first revealed in 2024 that President Donald Trump‘s daughter and her spouse were set to invest $1.4 billion into turning an abandoned Soviet weapons base, known as Sazan, into a luxury island resort.
Ivanka, 44, and Kushner, 45, who both served as senior advisors in Trump’s first administration but opted not to rejoin his cabinet after his 2024 election win, took a massive step toward their dream of creating the “extraordinary” retreat in January 2025, when their plans received preliminary approval from the Albanian government, according to the New York Times.
That approval came just two months after Ivanka’s father claimed victory over Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, and days before he was inaugurated for the second time, with the outlet noting that the project is “one of several” involving members of the president’s family and foreign government entities that Trump will be actively working with in the White House.
Both Kushner and a spokesperson for the Albanian government had previously shut down any suggestion that the project’s evaluation process would be in any way influenced by its direct connection to President Trump—however, that hasn’t stopped questions from being raised over the approval.
Now, as first reported by Politico, the Special Prosecution Office Against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) has opened an official inquiry into decisions made in 2024, when the protected status of the land earmarked for the resort was altered, thereby opening it up to development.
Concerns are being raised about how Ivanka and Kushner’s proposed resort—which is understood to include a planned 10,000 hotel rooms—will impact local wildlife, particularly the flamingos, seals, and sea turtles that live in an area of coastal wetland.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has since denied that the project will have any negative effect on wildlife, telling local lawmakers that the final proposal for the resort has not yet been submitted, the outlet states.
Rama initially issued his official approval for the planned resort on Dec. 30, 2025, after applications for the project were submitted by Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC, the company through which the build is being carried out.
According to a written approval, first obtained by Reuters, the project complied with Albania’s strategic investment legislation and job-creation requirements, with an estimated 1,000 employees.
Under the country’s law, a project may be approved as a strategic investment when it qualifies as being in a priority economic sector, such as tourism, thereby allowing the investor to proceed with its development.
“The form of the state’s participation in this investment will be realized through the establishment of a joint legal entity,” the country’s Strategic Investment Committee, which is headed up by Rama, emphasized.
However, the official approval of the project has not stopped it from facing bitter backlash from locals.
On June 2, images and video emerged of groups of protestors clashing with security guards at the site of the project, while others took part in a demonstration staged in the country’s capital of Tirana, where people were heard chanting “cancel the project” and “Ivanka, go home,” according to The Times of Israel.
At the same time, Ivanka touted the couple’s plans for the resort, telling podcast host David Senra during a May 31 interview that she and Kushner are hoping to create a “masterpiece” on the island, while insisting that they are acting with the utmost “restraint and care” to protect the natural landcsape.
“I’m working on an incredible project with my husband in the Mediterranean. It’s massive in scale,” she said. “It’s an unbelievable, beautiful 1,400-hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean.
“Over the course of many years, we developed the opportunity to help realize its potential and transform it, but with a lot of restraint and care, because the land is so beautiful that, really the architecture has to be fully integrated into it, almost rise from it.”
Despite Rama noting that the final proposal for the resort has not yet been officially submitted, Ivanka stated that she and her husband have already started working with several top architects, whom she described as “some of the greatest masters that exist,” although she did not reveal their identities.
She did, however, call attention to their “integrity,” vowing that the resulting resort will be built to last for many years to come.
“I was just there walking the land, really just trying to be with it and experience it alongside some of the greatest living architects of our time, true masters of their craft,” she said. “People with integrity so absolute there will be no compromise and that’s something we want to create there.
“When you work with real artists, regardless of their medium, whether it’s a canvas or real estate, a home, music, they don’t compromise. Their integrity is precise and absolute, and they’ll push themselves, they’ll push everyone around them. That’s where you get to something.”
Discussing the origins of the project, Trump said that she and her husband—who live in a custom megamansion on Miami’s “Billionaire Bunker” island with their three children—first discovered the island when they were vacationing on a friend’s boat and spotted the land while swimming in the ocean.
“We were on a friend’s boat and we stopped for a swim. Effectively that’s how we found it,” she shared. “We swam to the islands, we went on a hike, barefoot, all the way up to the top and we were just captivated. And it stayed with us ever since.”
Ivanka also addressed the wetlands that are now being investigated, explaining that the resort will include not only Sazan itself, but a peninsula that sits across from it and boasts “beautiful white sand beaches.”
“We not only have the island, but we have five miles of beachfront directly across from the island, this beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side, the ocean on the other, beautiful white sand beaches,” she continued.
“For me, this feels more like a challenge than anything else, the culmination of all my experience in real estate, all of my travel, a lot of reflection on how I want to live, how I think people increasingly are wanting to live, and trying to build something that’s a tangible manifestation of that.”
She noted that she is excited to return to her “real estate roots,” adding that the project is “not even a business” for her, but rather a passion project.
Both Ivanka and Kushner have close ties to the real estate industry via their respective families. Before President Trump launched himself into politics, he was best known for his career as a developer, while Kushner’s family owns a vast portfolio of commercial, residential, and retail properties in and around New York.
However, this project marks the first time that the couple will venture into the heady world of luxury hotels—with multiple reports noting that they face a steep uphill battle before their resort will be ready for visitors.
Though it has been used as a tourist spot in recent years, the island has a somewhat dark past as a Soviet-era storage facility for chemical weapons.
According to Italian journalist Marzio Mian, who visited the island in July 2024, shortly after Ivanka and Kushner’s plans for the 1,400-acre land were revealed, it is littered with “signs depicting skull and crossbones, warning of landmines,” with visitors to the area warned not to venture too far off specific paths out of fears that they could stumble across an unexploded ordnance.
Plans to remove the remaining weapons and ammunition on the island are well underway, however, with the Albanian government announcing in July 2020 that members of the country’s armed forces had been despatched to Sazan in order to begin clearing it of any dangerous ordnance.
After Trump and Kushner’s plans for the resort received preliminary approval, the Albanian government confirmed that it would work with them in order to continue clearing their development site of all unexploded and buried weapons.
As for the crumbling military buildings and 3,600 derelict bunkers that were abandoned on the island, the couple is reportedly planning to incorporate at least a few of them into their hotel plans—with Trump revealing in a 2024 podcast interview that they were working with the “best architects and the best brands” to make the resort into an “extraordinary” property.
Despite the remnants of the island’s dark past as a Communist military base, tourists began flocking to its dazzling beaches as early as 2017, when it was reopened to the public after being closed for years.
According to Lonely Planet, the island is easily accessible by regular ferries from Vlore, one of Albania’s most popular—and luxurious—tourist destinations, a reputation that Ivanka and Kushner will undoubtedly be keen to transfer to their own high-end hotel.
“Once used as a submarine and chemical-weapons base by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it’s now home to an Albanian-Italian military base used to combat narcotics smuggling,” Lonely Planet states.
“In the summer of 2017, a small area of the island opened to visitors, making parts of its pristine coastline and historic relics accessible for the first time.”
President Rama made no secret of his excitement about the Ivanka Trump-Jared Kushner development, telling The Guardian that he believes Albania “can’t afford not to exploit a gift like Sazan” and adding: “We need luxury tourism like a desert needs water.”
To that end, the government is even in the process of building an airport near Vlore to ferry wealthy tourists directly to the country’s most affluent and desirable area—an airport that would also serve as an easy access point for Ivanka and Kushner’s hotel.
However, not everyone is thrilled about the project, with some critics accusing the Albanian government of a lack of transparency about the deal with the couple, according to the Times.
One, Agron Shehaj, who is a member of the opposition party in the Albanian government, told the outlet: “Of course for Albania, which is a poor country, it is important to develop tourism. But there has been a lack of transparency here, and it makes it look like this is a private deal that is in the political interest of the prime minister of Albania.”
Others raised concerns about the impact that the development will have on the island’s thriving wildlife, including freelance tour guide Arben Kola, who told The Independent: “The way tourism works for Sazan at the moment is it helps to preserve nature, not damage it. We shouldn’t change that.”
Though Kushner has not commented on the recent reports about his proposed tourism mecca, he told The Guardian in 2024 that their plans would carefully consider Sazan’s natural environment—stating: “When people announce a development, everyone gets scared.
“Everybody assumes the worst. But once they see the plans we have, the way we’re designing it, the way we’re being faithful and considerate of the environment around us, I think that people will be very, very pleased. And again, with developments, you never make everyone happy.”
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