Wherever Jared Kushner’s Disastrous Business Plans Wander, Indictments and Protests Seem to Follow

3 min readAwhile back, here in the shebeen, we chewed over the attempt by America’s Premier Fun Couple, Jared and Ivanka, to annex a protected wildlife habitat in Albania for their own private Mediterranean Mar-a-Lago. This raised holy hell among all the Albanians who were neither related to the president nor in business with him. There were marches and protests, and for a moment the government itself even tottered a little. The symbol for the protest was the pink flamingo, for which the parcel in question had been preserved as a refuge. The opposition became known as the Flamingo Revolution, which is admittedly very cool.Well, The Wall Street Journal has chimed in with another element of the story, and it is a very Trumpian plot twist indeed. It turns out that the land in question was allegedly stolen by a badass wanted for drug smuggling.The images were of a spit of land where their parents and grandparents once raised potatoes. The villagers contended the property was stolen from them in the 2000s by Artur Shehu—a suspected gangster who fled to Miami after a gunfight at his bar. So they wrote a letter to Kushner saying they were locked in nearly two decades of court disputes with Shehu, urging the developers not to proceed. The site, they wrote, is “owned by the village and its residents.”Instead, a Kushner-backed development group pressed ahead and paid Shehu over $120 million for the land earlier this year. Two months later, Albanian prosecutors sought Shehu’s arrest for allegedly playing a lead role in a sweeping international drug-smuggling operation that brought cocaine from South America to Europe in shipments of charcoal and fruit paste. Shehu laundered money through property—including the peninsula in Zvernec—that was stolen using techniques such as forged Ottoman-era land records, prosecutors said.(Any blogging day on which you can type, “forged Ottoman-era land records,” is a good blogging day.)It’s weird. Wherever Kushner goes, indictments and protests seem to follow.While most of his investing has been out of his $6 billion private-equity fund backed by Gulf wealth funds, Kushner also turned back to his real-estate roots. He talked of getting in front of the investment curve by developing in the Balkans, where tourism and property prices are rising, targeting Serbia and Albania.He struck a no-bid deal with Serbia’s government to develop state-owned land in central Belgrade—drawing local criticism that Serbia’s government was trying to cozy up to Trump, a charge the government denied. The Serbia plans fell apart after weeks of protests and the indictment of a cabinet minister who pushed through project approvals. Kushner pulled out in December.The Albania project in Zvernec has drawn a larger popular backlash. A video showing the Kushner-backed group’s private guards punching a local villager and dragging him across a beach sparked large daily protests in Tirana. They have continued for over two months, with protesters expanding their criticisms to endemic corruption and rampant development in a movement they call the Flamingo Revolution.Personally, I love the fact that, without knowing it, every tacky suburban lawn owner is supporting a plucky Albanian resistance. But, wait, this looks bad.Unlike in Serbia, money has already changed hands here. The Kushner-backed development group paid well over $240 million for land to private landowners including Shehu, according to a person familiar with the sales. Shehu’s lawyer, Kujtim Cakrani, says Shehu is neither a drug dealer nor a land thief, and he never dealt directly with Kushner—only acting through an intermediary.Here are some more things you should not feel obligated to believe.“He has absolutely no connection to the charges,” Cakrani said. “He is simply a landowner, coming from a large landowning family,” and his interactions with others in the indictment were solely for legitimate business deals. A spokesman for the development group—a venture of Kushner and other partners—said the Albanian legal system is “the appropriate venue for resolving questions about land ownership and the integrity of prior transactions.” The group is aware of the allegations “regarding the land seller” and isn’t itself the subject of any investigation, he said, adding, “We continue to believe the underlying land acquisitions were conducted lawfully.”Viva los Flamencos! Venceremos!