It’s comprehensible why President Donald Trump would have Albania on his mind.
That’s as a result of his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner are on the verge of scoring huge with a billion-dollar unique luxurious rental improvement on Sazan Island simply off the Albanian coast.
Trump confused Albania with Armenia when he mistakenly claimed in a Mark Levin interview final week that he had brokered a peace settlement between Azerbaijan and Albania, when he meant to say Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Armenia is a landlocked nation within the South Caucasus area of Eurasia, bordering Turkey. Albania, a socialist nation, is within the Balkans, bordering Greece, and has an extended shoreline alongside the Adriatic Sea going through Italy.
Trump, in speaking about his worldwide peacemaking successes, mentioned, “You noticed Azerbaijan. That was an enormous one happening for thirty, thirty-five years with, uh, Albania. Consider that.”
“I imply happening for years, and I bought to know the heads, and I bought to know them by means of commerce. I used to be coping with them just a little bit, and I mentioned, ’Why are you guys preventing? Then I mentioned, ‘I’m not gonna do a commerce deal when you guys are gonna struggle. It’s loopy,” Trump mentioned.
The “two guys” have been Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. It’s comprehensible if Trump didn’t dare danger remembering, mentioning, and botching their names.
However he would have remembered the title of Albanian Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama whom Ivanka and Jared Kushner have befriended, and who paved the best way for the Kushner/Trump funding.
It’s a difficult funding of greater than $1.4 billion. Whereas Albania has by no means been at battle with Azerbaijan, it has been at battle with inside political corruption. Which it’s dropping.
Whereas quick buck tourism is flourishing alongside the coast, Tirana, the capital, has change into a paradise for drug cash laundering.
A former president of Albania, Ilir Meta, is in jail on corruption prices, former Prime Minister Sali Berisha is on trial for political corruption, and Erion Veliaj, the mayor of Tirana and inheritor obvious to Rama, is in jail awaiting trial on cash laundering prices.
Solely two years in the past Charles McGonigal, a former high FBI counterintelligence official, was sentenced to greater than two years in jail for concealing some $225,000 in laundered money he acquired from a former Albanian intelligence official who as soon as labored for Rama.
McGonigal allegedly warned Rama in opposition to awarding a profitable oil drilling contract to a Russian entrance firm through which the intelligence officer had a monetary curiosity. In appreciation, McGonigal offered Rama with an FBI hat.
There isn’t a proof that Ivanka and Jared Kushner gave Rama something throughout their conferences, aside from good needs from Trump, which can have been sufficient to win Rama’s approval of the undertaking.
Rama, who as soon as referred to as Trump a humiliation, now praises him, saying, upon Trump’s return to the White Home, “Possibly God saved Donald Trump not solely to make America nice, however to get up Europe.”
Kushner, together with Saudi Arabian companions, plans to construct a collection of luxurious condos on Sazan Island, an uninhabited island within the Bay of Vlora that overlooks the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. The views are spectacular.
The island, which the locals now name “Trump Island,” was off limits to the general public for years. It as soon as served as an Italian army outpost throughout World Warfare II. It was later occupied by the Russians throughout the Chilly Warfare. There are crumbling army installations all around the island in addition to previous army ordinance mendacity round.
The undertaking was enhanced by the completion of a brand new airport simply miles away at Vlora. Which means that the wealthy can fly in an out to their unique island in Albania with out assembly any Albanians, aside from the cleansing girl. It’s Albanian socialism.
If issues don’t work out, they will at all times flip the island into Albania Alcatraz. Trump would love that too.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas, writer of three books on Albania, may be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
