Albanian Prosecutors Seek Arrest of Twenty People, Possible Links to Trump Project

(Patria) - Albanian prosecutors said on Saturday they had requested the arrest of twenty people on suspicion of drug trafficking and money laundering, with media claiming some of them could be linked to a resort project connected to relatives of Donald Trump, AFP reported.

Opposition to a planned luxury resort linked to the US president's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner has sparked large daily protests in the country over the past two weeks. Demonstrators are demanding that the project in the protected coastal zone of Zvernec and on the uninhabited island of Sazan be halted and that Prime Minister Edi Rama resign.

On Saturday, the Special Prosecution against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) said in a statement that an investigation into international cocaine trafficking had revealed the involvement of several individuals in "operations suspected of serving to conceal the origin of assets and integrate illegal income into the formal economy."

SPAK said it had asked courts to order the arrest of twenty people, but only four had been arrested by Saturday. The Zvernec project was not mentioned.

Courts ordered the preventive seizure of "some assets, related to purchase-sale contracts," the statement said. It stated that the contracts involved individuals identified only by initials as A.Sh., F.S., and B.S., and "the company 'A...L...D... Sh.a.'"

"The amount under preventive seizure exceeds 128.4 million euros," it said.

Part of the suspicious investments relate to real estate and construction projects in Tirana, Palase, Himare, and other coastal areas, prosecutors said.

The company cited by prosecutors as 'A...L...D...Sh.a.' could be Albania Land Development (ALD).

Public documents from the Albanian commercial register, seen by AFP, show that the company purchased huge plots of land in Zvernec that appear to correspond to those involved in the tourism project described by Ivanka Trump in a recent podcast.

"We have eight kilometers of coastline directly across from the island (Sazan), this beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side, the ocean on the other, beautiful white sandy beaches," she said.

A.Sh. could be Artur Shehu, mentioned in several local media reports, including an investigation by the news website Reporter.al. The reports presented Shehu as the main seller of land intended for the tourism complex project by Albania Land Development.

After being contacted by AFP on Saturday afternoon, SPAK did not respond.