Letter Shows Villagers Warned Kushner Firm About Disputed Resort Land

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have spent months saying the same thing about their $4.7 billion resort project in Albania. They had no idea anyone claimed the land was stolen. That story just got a lot harder to sell.

A letter has surfaced that appears to blow a hole in it. Nearly two years ago, villagers from a small Albanian peninsula called Zvërnec wrote directly to Kushner's firm. They begged the president's son-in-law not to build on land they say belongs to them. The letter was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, and it is now the center of a very ugly fight playing out on a beach thousands of miles from Washington.

What the letter actually said

The villagers did not send a vague complaint. They spelled it out. They told Kushner's private equity firm, Affinity Partners, that the property was tied up in court fights that had dragged on for decades. They said the site was "owned by the village and its residents." And they asked for one of two things: either pay them for the land or hit pause on the whole project until the ownership question got sorted out.

Think about the timing here. This letter went out before the bulldozers showed up. Before the fencing. Before any of the confrontations that would later get filmed and shared around the world. The people who live there tried to warn the developers early, in writing, and asked to settle the matter the calm way.

The denial that does not add up

Here is where things get sticky. The chairman of Sazan Real Estate, Asher Abehsera, told the Journal flat out: "We did not see or hear of any dispute at all." That is a strong statement. It is also the exact opposite of what the letter suggests, since the letter went straight to Kushner's firm and laid the dispute out in plain terms.

So now there are two versions of reality. In one, nobody knew anything and the villagers are only complaining now that the project is real. In the other, the developers were told years ago and pressed ahead anyway. The letter is the piece of paper that makes the first version tough to defend. A spokesperson for Kushner did not respond to a request for comment.

The alleged gangster behind the land

The claims about how this land changed hands read like a movie plot. Villagers say the property was taken by a man named Artur Shehu, described as a suspected gangster. The accusation against him is very specific. He is accused of forging land records that date back to the Ottoman era, the kind of ancient paperwork that is almost impossible for anyone to verify centuries later.

That is the heart of the mess. Land claims in this part of the world can turn into a knot of old deeds, slow courts, and lawsuits that never really end. For an outsider it looks like a paperwork puzzle. For the families who grew up there, it is personal. This is the ground their parents and grandparents worked, and they are not treating it like a business dispute.

Someone already went to prison over this land

This is not just talk from angry neighbors. There is a criminal case attached to it. According to reporting from 2021, Shehu's alleged middleman in the land grab was sentenced in 2018 to three years in prison. The charge was the fraudulent acquisition of 187 hectares of land in Zvërnec, the same area where the Kushner and Ivanka development is planned. That is roughly 460 acres.

A prison sentence is about as concrete as it gets. It means an actual court looked at how this land was obtained and found something criminal. The catch is that the case did not stay settled. It has kept bouncing between courts and is still hotly contested today. That back-and-forth is exactly why the villagers wanted the resort put on hold until the dust cleared.

Bulldozers, barbed wire, and a punch caught on camera

The paperwork fight turned physical in late May 2026. That is when bulldozers and barbed-wire fencing showed up on the beaches. For the villagers, seeing heavy equipment roll onto land they say is theirs was the last straw. Protests broke out fast.

Then came the video that spread everywhere. In it, private security guards working for the Kushner-backed group were filmed punching a villager in the face and dragging him across the beach. It is not the kind of image a luxury resort brand wants attached to its name. A fight over old deeds in a courtroom is one thing. A man being dragged across the sand in front of a camera is another, and it put the whole project on the map for people who had never heard of Zvërnec.

The political favor angle

There is also a government layer to all of this. An Albanian opposition leader has claimed that Prime Minister Edi Rama was "seeking to buy political influence" from Trump by approving the development plans. In plain English, the accusation is that greenlighting the resort was a way to get on the good side of the American president through his family's business.

That is a serious charge, and it changes how the story reads. It is no longer just a real estate deal that hit a snag. It becomes a question about whether a foreign leader used land approvals as a bargaining chip. Rama's government has pushed the project forward, which is exactly what the villagers and the opposition are pointing to.

It is not only the villagers pushing back

The land dispute is the loudest part of the fight, but it is not the only opposition. Environmental groups have come out against the project too. Their concern is what a $1.4 billion resort would do to the island's natural setting, which is one of the reasons the location is desirable in the first place.

So the Kushner group is facing pressure from two directions at once. On one side you have families fighting over who owns the ground. On the other you have people fighting over what gets built on it. Both groups want the same thing in the short term, which is to slow the whole thing down.

What the villagers say they want now

Village leader Kostaq Konomi put it as simply as anyone could. "The only thing that I want now is that they give me back my land," he told the Journal. No lawsuit language. No talk of settlements or square footage. Just the land back.

That line captures the gap between the two sides. The developers are talking about a resort, a brand, and an investment. The villagers are talking about ground their families have held for generations. When you strip away the money and the politics, that is the real standoff, and the surfaced letter shows the villagers tried to say all of this early and in writing.

Why this letter matters

A public relations problem is one thing. A written record is another. The reason this letter carries weight is that it is dated, specific, and addressed to the right people. It undercuts the claim that nobody knew about the ownership fight, because the people who live on the land say they mailed the warning themselves.

Put the pieces together and you get a clear picture. Villagers who say the land was stolen. A criminal case that already sent someone to prison over acreage right next door. A written plea to Kushner's firm asking for payment or a pause. A flat denial that any dispute existed. And a video of a man getting dragged across a beach. Those are the facts on the table, and the letter is the one that ties them together.

For now, the bulldozers and the fencing are still there, the court case is still unresolved, and the two sides are telling stories that cannot both be true. The letter does not settle who owns the land. It does raise a hard question about who knew what, and when.