After failing in fashion and government, it looks like Ivanka is preparing to fail in luxury resort building next… just like her old man!

Ivanka and Jared’s lucrative land deals in Albania of all places are raising serious questions, according to the New York Times. The nepo babies have secured prime real estate to build luxurious hotels and resorts, through obscure and shady measures. The deals are so opaque, in fact, that even a former Trump donor is calling foul.

Poor and underdeveloped, Albania is a small Southern European country that sits north of Greece and across from the heel of Italy’s boot. The Balkan nation lived under Communist rule from 1946-91, a period in which the government seized most private property. Albania’s democratically elected government has been trying to return the property since, in a process that critics disparage as corrupt.

Enter: Jared and Ivanka!

Jared has secured an agreement to build a hotel and beach villa complex on land that a family claims has been theirs for generations. “They are trying to take from us what is ours,” one of the family members told the Times.

Overall, Jared’s investment company, Affinity Partners, is expected to pour $1 billion into Southern Albania. The firm is mostly backed by Saudi Arabia, which invested $2 billion just six months after Trump left the White House.

Those Saudi Royals… they sure move fast! 🤔🤔🤔

The other contested piece of real estate is on Sazan, the largest island in Albania. Previously a military outpost, it was a vital entry port for Italy during World War II. Eighty years later, the large island is mostly abandoned, filled with crumbling old buildings and bomb shelters.

Blessed with a prime spot on the Mediterranean, Jared and Ivanka want to erect a luxury resort they say will attract the world’s elite!

“We have this 1,400-acre island in the Mediterranean and we’re bringing in the best architects and the best brands,” Ivanka said this summer during an interview with bro-influencer Lex Fridman.

Ivanka’s language, as well as confirmation from a Kushner rep, indicates Albanian authorities have granted them approval for the grandiose project. But that doesn’t seem fair to an Albanian American real estate developer, Evi Kokalari-Angelakis, who says the Albanian government has effectively ignored her proposal.

“My biggest disadvantage is that I am up against Trump’s daughter and son-in-law,” she told the Times. “They have closed the door in my face. It is absolutely outrageous.”

Those are strong words from anybody, especially one of Trump’s own backers. Kokalari-Angelakis contributed to his 2020 reelection campaign and efforts to overturn the result. (No word on whether she’s endorsing in 2024.)

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Though Ivanka is always rumored to be separating herself from her 78-year-old criminally convicted father’s political ambitions, she remains aligned with the most central part of her family’s identity.

Grifting!

Earlier this summer, a writer for The New Republic ventured to the Trump family’s lost property in Mexico, which he described as a “huge,” muddy hole.”

The resort project, which was started in the mid-aughts, was abandoned by 2009. Buyers never received their money back, despite putting down investments well into the six figures.

“If at any point I had known this, I would have walked away,” a buyer for one of the nonexistent units, John Robbins, told the Times in 2011.

One of the other ripped off buyers, Sandra Sapol, told her story to CNN.

On a visit to the nonexistent property, she summed up her investment thusly: “That’s my hole.”

It’s unclear whether any of the buyers were ever fully refunded, though if we had to guess… Ivanka probably got her money back! In advertisements for the complex, she said she owned a unit herself.

“We are developing a world-class resort befitting of the Trump brand,” she said in the introduction video, per the LA Times. “I’m very excited about it. I actually chose to buy a unit in the first tower.”

Trump’s forays into overseas real estate have almost all ended in spectacular failure. But if one wants to really delve into shady Trump-licensed properties, look no further than his tower in Azerbaijan.

The skyscraper underwent serious scrutiny in the years following Trump’s election, with the New Yorker reporting Trump “helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.” 

In keeping with the theme, the tower was never completed. Trump eventually pulled his name from the building, which caught fire in 2018.

Though Ivanka didn’t buy a unit (at least to our knowledge), we know she was there. She recorded an Instagram video from the doomed structure prior to its destruction.

Ex-Trump donor and election denier Evi Kokalari-Angelakis may harbor frustrations about the apparent favoritism being displayed for Ivanka in Albania. But she can take solace in history.

If past is prologue, Ivanka’s Luxury Mediterranean Resort and Spa™ will never become a reality.

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