AILSA CHANG, HOST:
And now, to the Adriatic Sea. Years ago, Ivanka Trump said that she and her husband, Jared Kushner, were there on a friend's boat, and off the coast of Albania, they stopped for a swim.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "FOUNDERS")
IVANKA TRUMP: Effectively, that's how we found it. We swam to the islands. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.
CHANG: She spoke earlier this month to podcaster David Senra about a stretch of Albania's coastline where she and Kushner plan to build a luxury resort. Albania's government has given the project preliminary approval, but as NPR's Rob Schmitz reports from the capital, Tirana, the plans have prompted a growing protest movement against government corruption.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Every day since the beginning of June, this is the scene outside Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama's office in Tirana.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in non-English language).
SCHMITZ: Thousands calling on Rama to resign over a strip of coastal land his government is helping President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner develop. Protester Eden Hosha says the protests have evolved into a show of no confidence in the Albanian government.
EDEN HOSHA: We're tired of these guys stealing from us, stealing our resources, selling things that are not theirs to sell.
SCHMITZ: Things like Sazan, an uninhabited island across the sea from Zvernec, a strip of beach and cliffs along Albania's Adriatic coast. In David Senra's podcast that aired earlier this month, Ivanka Trump described both plots of land as belonging to her and Kushner.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "FOUNDERS")
TRUMP: Not only the island, but we have 5 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.
SCHMITZ: In an episode, called "Ivanka Trump On Building The Authentic Life," Trump told Senra that she and Kushner have helped, quote, "realize the land's potential."
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "FOUNDERS")
TRUMP: For me, it feels more like a challenge than anything else, the culmination of all of my experience in real estate, all of my travel, a lot of reflection on how I want to live.
SCHMITZ: But there are already tens of thousands living their lives on this land.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)
SCHMITZ: Taulant Bino stands along a dirt road separating wetland from fields of salt, glaringly white, sparkling in the sunlight. The ornithologist holds a pair of binoculars to his eyes and calls out the names of the local residents.
TAULANT BINO: This is a black-winged stilt, and then you see common terns and little terns. Just when you came here, there was a little egret and then flamingo. I saw at least one but should be more in the lagoon.
SCHMITZ: There are 250 species of birds here in this nationally protected lagoon called Vjose-Narte. Bino points across the water to a beach where a road for bulldozers has just been built.
BINO: Birds are the first to suffer. But not only birds - they are already suffering because building an access road in the middle of the breeding season, for a lot of species, it's horrendous.
SCHMITZ: Ivanka Trump says this project shows restraint and care for this pristine environment.
BINO: But what we see from the project ideas - we see tall buildings up to 10,000 rooms. So all this is, for sure, a new city rather than an environmental-based project.
SCHMITZ: Environmental organizations have filed legal challenges against the Albanian government over this project. Dorian Matlija is their lawyer.
DORIAN MATLIJA: But the main problem here is the problem that this is a protected area.
SCHMITZ: He says the land this resort would be built on is protected under the European Union's Natura 2000, a network of protected areas in the EU. Albania is not an EU member yet. It's in the process of becoming one, and Matlija says it's subject to the network's rules. But two years ago, Prime Minister Rama ushered in a new law that stripped away the protection of this ecosystem, allowing for the construction of five-star hotels. Matlija says this violates both Albanian and EU laws.
MATLIJA: So this is also endangering this longtime dream of joining the EU as well. So if somebody will try to go to the court against that, they have high chances of winning. And that's a big problem for the investors.
SCHMITZ: Another problem for investors, on June 2, Albanian prosecutors froze the bank accounts of a firm that purchased land for this project. It's part of an investigation into fraudulent property titles, and it involves a company owned by the Qatari brothers, Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who are helping finance and build Kushner and Trump's luxury resort. They did not respond to an NPR request for an interview.
When NPR emailed Kushner's Affinity Partners, a company called Sazan Real Estate Development responded with a statement from Asher Abehsera, a businessman Kushner has teamed up with to build projects in New York. Our focus, the statement said, remains on responsible stewardship, environmental enhancement, job creation and creating long-term value for local communities. The statement also said Kushner's Affinity Partners firm has no role in this project and that, quote, "partners are involved as investors in their personal capacity." Finding out who those investors are, though, has been difficult.
LINDITA CELA: From Albanian documents, it's impossible to find out.
SCHMITZ: Lindita Cela is one of Albania's most decorated investigative journalists. For months, she's been tracking down a string of shell companies from Albania to the Netherlands connected to Kushner and Trump's project.
CELA: You see for the one company, and you see that who owns this company is just another company. And if you go to this company, another one, you will find another one. The other company still, it brings to you - not to their names but to another company. So you just needed to go digging, digging, digging.
SCHMITZ: She likens her investigation to opening a set of Russian Matryoshka dolls, one leading to another. She's discovered several of the shell companies share the same address in Amsterdam. Each company is worth a single euro. They lead to the smallest Matryoshka doll, a company named Interroyal BV, owned in part by a Russian citizen named Nikita Maximovich Vinogradov and a Bulgarian citizen named Zoya Georgieva Gyurova.
Cela says neither individual has a public profile, but on paper, at least, she says this mysterious pair owns hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Albanian property...
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Non-English language spoken).
(CHEERING)
SCHMITZ: ...Property where on a recent weekend, hundreds of Albanians converged to protest the project at the proposed site of the resort. Thirty-four-year-old software engineer Albi Batozi was among them.
ALBI BATOZI: I don't want anyone to build here because this is our land, public land. It's for everybody, not for just a small 1% of people.
SCHMITZ: Batozi says Prime Minister Edi Rama treats this land like it's his to sell. NPR reached out to the prime minister, whose spokesperson said in a statement, the government understands that major investments can generate public debate. It went on to say, quote, "the ambition is to create a new benchmark for sustainable Mediterranean development." Batozi says Rama is a prime minister of one of Europe's poorest countries who is obsessed with five-star luxury projects.
BATOZI: But we are living in a studio apartment. Albania is like a studio apartment that barely holds place for Albanians.
SCHMITZ: Batozi says if Kushner and Trump build their resort here, it'll be coastline that'll be closed off to most Albanians. Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Albania.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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