Thousands of Albanians took to the streets of the capital, Tirana on Thursday for the fourth consecutive day of protests against a controversial luxury resort project linked to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.

The €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) development is being spearheaded by Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, and includes projects on Sazan Island and an undeveloped stretch of coastline near the Vjosa-Narta protected area in the south of the country. The wetland is home to flamingos, seals, and sea turtle nesting sites.

The Albanian government has defended the investment as a way to attract high-end tourism, support the economy, and achieve its long-standing goal of joining the EU. Environmental groups warn that the project threatens the fragile ecosystem and exposes broader governance issues.

Speaking to RT, political analyst Nikola Vujinovic said the controversy goes beyond environmental concerns and reflects wider political tensions in Albania. He argued that the project has become tangled up in debates over Prime Minister Edi Rama’s ties to Washington and support for the Trump administration.

According to Vujinovic, the protests also stem from broader allegations against Rama’s government, including claims of corruption and authoritarianism.

Here is the full report.

[SEE VIDEO]

https://www.rt.com/news/641040-mass-protests-albania-trump/

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MEANWHILE:

A demonstration in the Belgian capital against controversial cuts to education spending has descended into violence. It comes against the backdrop of mounting opposition to the government’s efforts to balance the budget. 

What began as a largely peaceful protest by thousands of students and teachers in central Brussels on Thursday later turned violent, with hooded individuals reportedly setting fires, damaging property and clashing with police. Some social media users posting videos on X claimed the unrest had been fueled by groups of migrant youths who infiltrated the demonstration.  

Protestors were opposed to a package of austerity measures put forward by Belgium’s French Community government, which oversees French-language education. The reforms would raise annual university tuition fees for most students from €835 ($964) to around €1,194 and require some secondary-school teachers to take on additional classroom hours without extra pay. 

Officials say the measures would save €300 million and help address a budget deficit projected to reach €1.9 billion. The roughly 35% increase would bring fees more closely into line with those at Flemish universities, according to the government. 

The package has sparked months of opposition from students, teachers, and trade unions, who argue that the changes will make higher education less accessible and place additional pressure on already overstretched staff. 

Despite the protests, the Parliament of the French Community approved the bill on Friday after more than 14 hours of debate, paving the way for the reforms to take effect. French Community government leader Elisabeth Degryse defended the measures as necessary to address the region’s financial challenges. 

https://www.rt.com/news/641081-brussels-protests-budget-cuts/

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SUNDAY WIRE EP 598 – The Epstein Class Head for Albania

This week on SUNDAY WIRE returns with host Patrick Henningsen, covering the biggest stories in the US and internationally. This week we unpack the fake Lebanon “truce” agreement being pushed by Trump and Netanyahu, which was quickly rejected by Hezbollah. Also, we get into Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s latest gaudy property deal in Albania—as the self-absorbed Epstein Class covet another private island—a public-private partnership land grab that’s now triggered a massive backlash in Albania. Later in the Overdrive segment, we’re joined by teammates Bryan “Hesher”McClain, Adam “Ruckus” Clark, and Basil Valentine for deeper comment and analysis on this week’s earth-shaking geopolitical development. All this and more…

https://21stcenturywire.com/2026/06/07/sunday-wire-ep-598-the-epstein-class-head-for-albania/

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         Gus Leonisky

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In June 2026, flamingos suddenly appeared in Tirana. Tens of thousands of Albanians flooded the streets, waving inflatable flamingos, demanding their Prime Minister resign. The trigger was a Trump-Kushner resort cleared for construction on a protected wetland.
But new court documents⁽⁺⁾ — obtained and presented here as the Edi Rama Files — reveal that the Zvërnec resort is merely a single node in real estate network that spans from Albania's coastline to its capital, authorised by Prime Minister Edi Rama himself.


Edi Rama: The Man With the Stamp

The Edi Rama Files focus on the activities of Albania’s National Territorial Council, the Keshilli Kombetar i Territorit (KKT). It issues permits for every major development in the country. Its chairman is Prime Minister Edi Rama.⁽⁺⁾

Since his arrival to power in 2013, every coastal resort and city skyscraper has required Edi Rama's personal signature. Without his stamp, nothing gets built.

That stamp now sits at the center of the scandal that has erupted across Albania. The country’s special prosecutorial service, SPAK, has revealed a sprawling network of drug trafficking and money laundering through the country’s real estate sector.

And every real estate project that is now under investigation⁽⁺⁾ by the country’s special prosecutorial service, SPAK, required a stamp of approval from the Prime Minister himself.

‘Strategic Investors’: Dispossession By Designation

But the permits are only half the story. The other half is the Strategic Investor designation deployed on every major project — a legal status that Rama invented⁽⁺⁾, proposed to parliament, and which he personally controls as Chairman of the Strategic Investment Committee.

Once a development receives Strategic Investor status, prior landowners cannot challenge it in court. The state is then legally empowered to compulsorily purchase their competing claims on the developer's behalf.

The Edi Rama Files show that the Green Coast development project, for example, received Strategic Investor status in 2015, one year after Rama signed its development permit. Local landowners who had court-confirmed property rights over the same coastal land — and who had written to the Prime Minister personally — found they had no legal avenue left. Their land became a resort.

On 30 December 2024, meanwhile, the Strategic Investment Committee — chaired by Edi Rama and bearing his signature alongside those of the Deputy Prime Minister, five ministers, and the state attorney — granted Strategic Investor status to Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC, the Kushner-linked entity behind the Zvërnec project.

The land, as SPAK has since established, was obtained via a forged Ottoman document. That forgery secured the previous owner’s claim and Strategic Investor designation gave the new developer legal protection. And Prime Minister Edi Rama’s KKT permit gave them the right to build.

SPAK's court order of 10 June 2026 — 180 pages, over 100 million euros frozen⁽⁺⁾, 20 arrest warrants — is one of the first times that anyone has been held to account for the dispossession wrought through this process. It covers deals Rama personally signed off on. The investigation is ongoing.

Zvërnec: The Story Breaks Open

In January 2025, Rama's KKT issued development permits for a luxury resort on the Vjosa-Narta lagoon, a protected Adriatic wetland home to flamingos, monk seals, and sea turtles.

The developer was Zvërnec South Adriatic Development — an offshore shell company founded just months earlier — with undisclosed owners linked to Qatari investors and to a project backed by Jared Kushner.

The land had been made available through a sequence of decisions by the Edi Rama government that follows a familiar pattern.

In 2021, Rama's Council of Ministers quietly downgraded the wetland's protected status, stripping more than 5,000 hectares from its boundaries.

In 2024, parliament passed Law 21/2024⁽⁺⁾, amendments to the protected areas legislation that directly opened the door to construction inside what had been the protected zone at Zvërnec.

At the end of that year, the developer received Strategic Investor status. Then the KKT signed the permits.

On 30 April 2026, excavators entered the protected zone before the permits had even been formally countersigned. When local officials arrived to issue a stop-work order, the company told them to contact Tirana.

Albania's Special Anti-Corruption Prosecution (SPAK) opened a criminal investigation⁽⁺⁾ into the land acquisition and the 2024 regulatory changes. Its findings are at the center of the Edi Rama Files.

SPAK: Crimes Laundered on the Albanian Coast

SPAK's case files trace the Zvërnec land to a man named Artur Shehu, originally from Vlorë, who resides in Florida while running business interests across Albania's coast.

Shehu's ownership claim rested on an Ottoman-era document — the "Daimi Register of 1318" — purportedly proving his ancestor owned the land centuries ago. Albania's Supreme Court found the document had been forged and intentionally mistranslated.

SPAK alleges he is also a cocaine trafficker — with political connections. In January 2019, European law enforcement monitored a meeting in Aruba during which Shehu and his associates discussed cocaine logistics in Latin America and real estate investments in Albania "potentially financed with illicit funds and supported by political authorities."

Following that money, SPAK's investigation expanded beyond Zvërnec. The same network — same names, same method⁽⁺⁾ — runs through the Garden Building and Colonnade towers in central Tirana, a plot near the Air Albania Stadium, and the Green Coast resort at Palasa on the Ionian coast.

On 10 June 2026, the court issued Decision No. 432: 20 arrest warrants, over 100 million euros in assets frozen, properties across Tirana and the southern coast seized. Among the frozen assets: villas inside Green Coast, the luxury resort on the Ionian coast in cadastral zone ZK 1739, Gjileke, Palase, Vlorë.

Green Coast: The Smoking Gun Signature

The Edi Rama Files show that the cadastral zone ZK 1739⁽⁺⁾ — identified by SPAK in its sweeping criminal case — is the same zone as KKT Decision No. 8, dated 7 March 2014⁽⁺⁾: the development permit for Green Coast signed by Edi Rama in his first year in office.

When Rama signed, the land was already under dispute. His own task force had flagged title problems in the area. Local families with court-confirmed property rights wrote to the Prime Minister personally asking him not to authorise the construction.

Rama signed anyway. The following year, his government passed legislation granting Green Coast Strategic Investor status — legally empowering the state to compulsorily purchase the competing claims of dispossessed families on the developer's behalf.

In 2017, a second KKT decision expanded the resort further. And again in 2020, Rama's KKT granted developer status inside Green Coast to Aleksandar Frangaj, owner of TV Klan, Albania's most-watched private television channel — a network the Media Ownership Monitor describes as having "been accused of receiving rewards for its pro-government editorial line."

But the SPAK files reveal something more: the drug trafficking network was not merely buying villas inside Green Coast⁽⁺⁾. It was trying to buy access to the permitting system itself.

Intercepted communications in the SPAK case files show that in February 2021, members of the network discussed paying between 2 and 3 million euros to Samir Mane⁽⁺⁾ — owner of the Balfin Group and developer of Green Coast, one of the richest and most powerful oligarchs in Albania — to act as an intermediary in obtaining a construction permit for a residential complex of around 30 villas and a hotel inside the Green Coast 2 development.

By 24 February 2021, one member of the network messaged another confirming that he had spoken with "Liri" (Ilir Shtufi, also named in the SPAK arrest warrants) and "Zamiri" (Samir Mane), and that Mane had told him he would need three million euros to include the land of network associate Alfredo Hamzai in the complex.

Three days later, the network confirmed they had decided on the three-million-euro payment to Mane for inclusion of the land in Green Coast. The permit, the files note, was to cover approximately 40 villas, with 20% going to the person under investigation.

‘Fuck You’: Edi Rama Responds

The protests began on 23 May 2026 in Zvërnec village, when residents tried to stop the excavators and private security guards assaulted them while police watched. Within days, the streets of Tirana filled. Within two weeks, tens of thousands were marching. They have not stopped.

Prime Minister Edi Rama’s response has been contemptuous from the start. He dismissed the protests as "engineered digital hysteria". When they grew, he attributed them to foreign cyber activists, then to Iran.

Rama deployed a promotional video featuring Ivanka Trump praising Albania's natural beauty — released while SPAK was actively investigating the land whose permits his government had issued.

Rama also misled the Albanian public about the extent of his real estate dealings. He told parliament that no final decision on the Kushner project had been made, while his KKT had already signed two development permits, his government had already de-protected the wetland, and his construction crews were already inside it.

Rama has even gone so far as to attack the special prosecutor’s office he helped to set up, in a desperate effort to cover for crimes committed under his supervision. He has publicly described SPAK's prosecutors as "going off the rails" — the same institution that has since frozen over 100 million euros in assets connected to projects his own KKT authorised.

Nine EU member states have now blocked Albania's accession report over rule-of-law concerns. Meanwhile, the European Parliament has called for a halt to construction in protected areas. SPAK is still investigating.

Albania is asking the world to finally pay attention to Edi Rama’s governance of their country — beyond the TED talks, European summits, or embrace by US President Barack Obama. These files give hard evidence of their reason.

https://ediramafiles.org/

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