Albania Is Not for Sale: Kushner’s $4B Resort Triggers ‘Flamingo Revolution’

阿尔巴尼亚非卖品：库什纳 40 亿美元度假村引发“火烈鸟革命”

Protesters in the Albanian capital | Photo credit: Alice Taylor/POLITICO 阿尔巴尼亚首都的抗议者 | 图片来源：Alice Taylor/POLITICO

Albania’s “Flamingo Revolution” is testing how far a government will go to protect a foreign investor’s interests, and whether the EU will hold it accountable. 阿尔巴尼亚的“火烈鸟革命”正在考验一个政府为了保护外国投资者的利益能走多远，以及欧盟是否会追究其责任。

Albanian anti-corruption prosecutors froze the bank accounts of Albania Land Development, the company that bought beachfront plots for a luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner, as national protests against the project entered their seventh consecutive day. The preventive seizure was ordered by SPAK, the Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organised Crime, as part of a property-fraud investigation into how land titles in a protected coastal wetland were acquired and how the area was stripped of its protected status. 随着针对该项目的全国性抗议活动进入第七天，阿尔巴尼亚反腐败检察官冻结了“阿尔巴尼亚土地开发公司”（Albania Land Development）的银行账户，该公司此前购买了贾里德·库什纳（Jared Kushner）支持的豪华度假村所需的海滨地块。此次预防性扣押是由阿尔巴尼亚反腐败和有组织犯罪特别检察官办公室（SPAK）下令执行的，作为一项财产欺诈调查的一部分，旨在查明受保护沿海湿地的土地所有权是如何获得的，以及该地区是如何被剥夺保护地位的。

Albania Land Development is owned by the Syrian, nationalized Qatari brothers Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who recently bought the plots in Zvernec, near the southern city of Vlora. One source put the frozen sum at about $195 million transferred for the land, a figure SPAK has not confirmed. “阿尔巴尼亚土地开发公司”由叙利亚裔、已入籍卡塔尔的兄弟穆塔兹·阿尔-卡亚特（Moutaz Al-Khayyat）和拉梅兹·阿尔-卡亚特（Ramez Al-Khayyat）拥有，他们最近在南部城市发罗拉（Vlora）附近的兹韦尔内茨（Zvernec）购买了这些地块。一位消息人士称，被冻结的土地转让资金约为 1.95 亿美元，但这一数字尚未得到 SPAK 的证实。

SPAK confirmed on 2 June that it had opened a case into the changes made in 2024 to the protected status of the Vjosa-Narta area and into how ownership of the land was obtained. Prosecutors said they would also examine how officials bypassed the normal public-tender system and the origin of the funds used to buy the land titles, in an area where ownership has been disputed since the collapse of communism in the 1990s. SPAK 于 6 月 2 日证实，已针对 2024 年对维约萨-纳尔塔（Vjosa-Narta）地区保护地位的变更以及土地所有权的获取方式立案调查。检察官表示，他们还将审查官员如何绕过正常的公开招标程序，以及购买土地所有权所用资金的来源。该地区的土地所有权自 20 世纪 90 年代共产主义政权垮台以来一直存在争议。

In 2024, the Albanian Parliament passed special legislation reclassifying Sazan and the Pishe Poro-Narta area to permit large-scale development, the move that made the strategic investor designation possible; opposition parties and environmental groups argued the changes were written to accommodate Kushner-linked investors. One administrator of Albania Land Development, Redi Struga, has reportedly been subject to searches. 2024 年，阿尔巴尼亚议会通过了特别立法，重新划分了萨赞（Sazan）和皮舍波罗-纳尔塔（Pishe Poro-Narta）地区，以允许进行大规模开发，此举使得“战略投资者”的认定成为可能；反对党和环保组织认为，这些修改是为了迎合与库什纳有关联的投资者。据报道，“阿尔巴尼亚土地开发公司”的一名行政人员雷迪·斯特鲁加（Redi Struga）已接受搜查。

Rama has tried to occupy both sides of the SPAK action, backing the investigation into the suspicious local sellers while defending the foreign investors as legitimate. He condemned the guards’ conduct as “disgusting” and told parliament he wanted to make Albania “a destination to be envied in the region,” insisting the final proposal had not been submitted, the environmental study was incomplete, and the lagoon itself would not be touched. He said five international architecture firms were redesigning the masterplan. 拉马（Rama）试图在 SPAK 的行动中两头兼顾，既支持对可疑的当地卖家进行调查，又为外国投资者辩护，称其是合法的。他谴责了警卫的行为“令人作呕”，并告诉议会他希望让阿尔巴尼亚成为“该地区令人羡慕的目的地”，同时坚称最终提案尚未提交，环境研究尚未完成，泻湖本身也不会受到影响。他说，目前有五家国际建筑公司正在重新设计总体规划。

“The investors are within their rights. Blocking the transaction is arbitrary and negative,” Rama told reporters. He has refused to halt the wider plan. In an interview with Politico at the EU-Western Balkans summit in Tivat, Montenegro, he said the protests would never have gathered this much attention on their own. “If it was not Jared, they would not give a shit about what is happening in Albania,” Rama said. “投资者是在行使他们的权利。阻止交易是武断且负面的，”拉马对记者说。他拒绝停止更广泛的计划。在黑山蒂瓦特举行的欧盟-西巴尔干峰会上，他在接受《政客》（Politico）采访时表示，这些抗议活动本身绝不会引起如此多的关注。“如果不是因为贾里德，他们根本不会在乎阿尔巴尼亚正在发生什么，”拉马说。

Rama, a long-time friend of the Trump and Kushner families, claimed the anti-corruption and land defence campaign was being pushed by opponents of Donald Trump. 拉马是特朗普和库什纳家族的长期朋友，他声称这场反腐败和土地保卫运动是由唐纳德·特朗普的反对者推动的。

The protests, which civil society and international media have called the Flamingo Revolution, have grown well past their environmental starting point into a challenge to Rama himself, and the asset freeze is only the most visible of several legal and diplomatic pressures now bearing on his government. 这些被公民社会和国际媒体称为“火烈鸟革命”的抗议活动，已经远远超出了最初的环保诉求，演变成对拉马本人的挑战。资产冻结只是目前对其政府施加的多种法律和外交压力中最明显的一项。

Two projects, one coastline 两个项目，一条海岸线

The development is two ventures presented as one ambition. Off the bay of Vlora sits Sazan, Albania’s largest island at about 5.7 square kilometres, a former Italian and then communist-era military base kept off-limits for decades and covered in Cold War bunkers and tunnels. On 30 December 2024, a Strategic Investment Committee chaired by Rama granted strategic investor status to Atlantic Incubation Partners, a firm affiliated with Kushner’s Affinity Partners, for an Aman-branded eco-resort on the island, a project valued at about 1.4 billion euros and projected to employ roughly 1,000 people. 该开发项目由两个合二为一的商业雄心组成。在发罗拉湾外坐落着萨赞岛，这是阿尔巴尼亚最大的岛屿，面积约 5.7 平方公里，曾是意大利和共产主义时期的军事基地，几十年来一直被列为禁区，岛上布满了冷战时期的掩体和隧道。2024 年 12 月 30 日，由拉马主持的战略投资委员会授予库什纳旗下 Affinity Partners 的关联公司 Atlantic Incubation Partners“战略投资者”地位，用于在岛上建设一个安缦（Aman）品牌的生态度假村。该项目价值约 14 亿欧元，预计将雇佣约 1,000 人。

Reuters, which saw the written decision, reported that the state would take part through a joint legal entity involving the state-run Albanian Investment Corporation. The terms include no tax during the construction phase while the Albanian state underwrites the water, electricity and sewage infrastructure. 路透社查阅了书面决定，报道称国家将通过涉及国有阿尔巴尼亚投资公司的联合法律实体参与其中。条款包括在建设阶段免税，同时由阿尔巴尼亚政府承担水、电和污水处理基础设施的费用。

The second and larger venture sits on the mainland, on the Vjosa-Narta coast near Zvernec, where Albania Land Development assembled the beachfront plots now under investigation. Conservationists describe the wider zone, the Pishe Poro-Narta protected landscape, as one of the Mediterranean’s last largely intact coastal wetlands, home to flamingos, more than 200 migratory bird species, Mediterranean monk seals and nesting loggerhead sea turtles. 第二个规模更大的项目位于大陆，即兹韦尔内茨附近的维约萨-纳尔塔海岸，那里正是“阿尔巴尼亚土地开发公司”整合了目前正处于调查中的海滨地块的地方。环保人士将该更广泛的区域——皮舍波罗-纳尔塔保护景观区——描述为地中海最后几片基本完好的沿海湿地之一，是火烈鸟、200 多种候鸟、地中海僧海豹和筑巢的红海龟的家园。

Pishë Poro-Nartë Protected Landscape | Foto by PPNEA 皮舍波罗-纳尔塔保护景观区 | 图片来源：PPNEA

The estimate for the project shifts depending on who is speaking. The Sazan component is consistently put at about 1.4 billion euros. Rama has referred to a four-billion-euro project once the Vlora mainland is included, and has said the two together could be worth up to five billion euros. Most coverage renders the aggregate as roughly $4 billion. Land defenders and the ecologist Joni Vorpsi of PPNEA-BirdLife Albania describe a project consisting of around 10,000 hotel rooms and villas spread across the island and the coast, a scale Vorpsi said would “completely destroy that wild region.” 该项目的估算金额因发言者而异。萨赞岛部分的估值一直被定为约 14 亿欧元。拉马曾提到，如果加上发罗拉大陆部分，项目总额将达到 40 亿欧元，并表示两者合计价值可能高达 50 亿欧元。大多数媒体报道将其总额定为约 40 亿美元。土地保卫者和阿尔巴尼亚 PPNEA-国际鸟盟（BirdLife Albania）的生态学家乔尼·沃普西（Joni Vorpsi）描述称，该项目包括分布在岛屿和海岸上的约 10,000 间酒店客房和别墅，沃普西称这种规模将“彻底摧毁那片荒野地区”。

The money behind Affinity Partners Affinity Partners 背后的资金

Affinity Partners is not US money in any ordinary sense. Kushner set up the firm in 2021, days after leaving the White House, with no prior private equity experience, and it is funded largely by Gulf sovereign wealth. The largest single backer is Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which committed $2 billion in 2021 over the written objections of its own screening panel. That panel flagged the firm’s inexperience, an asset management fee it judged excessive, the kingdom bearing most of the risk, and “public relations risks” tied to Kushner’s role as a senior adviser to Trump, and called the firm’s operations unsatisfactory. Affinity Partners 并非通常意义上的美国资金。库什纳在离开白宫几天后的 2021 年成立了该公司，此前他没有任何私募股权经验，其资金主要来自海湾国家的主权财富。最大的单一支持者是沙特阿拉伯的公共投资基金（PIF），该基金在 2021 年不顾其内部审查小组的书面反对，承诺投入 20 亿美元。该小组曾指出该公司缺乏经验、资产管理费过高、沙特承担了大部分风险，以及与库什纳曾担任特朗普高级顾问相关的“公共关系风险”，并称该公司的运营情况令人不满意。