Kushner closing deals begun during Trump term
WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, confirmed Friday that he was closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, the latest example of the former president’s family doing business abroad even as Trump seeks to return to the White House.
Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Trump was in office. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with Richard Grenell, who served briefly as acting director of national intelligence under Trump and also as ambassador to Germany and special envoy to the Balkans.
One of the proposed projects would be the development of an island off the coast of Albania into a luxury tourist destination.
A second — with a planned luxury hotel and 1,500 residential units and a museum — is in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, at the site of the long-vacant former headquarters of the Yugoslav army destroyed in 1999 by the NATO bombings, according to a member of Parliament in Serbia and Kushner’s company.
These first two projects both involve land now controlled by the governments, meaning a deal would have to be finalized with foreign governments.
A third project, also in Albania, would be built on the Zvërnec peninsula, a 1,000-acre coastal area in the south of Albania that is part of the resort community known as Vlorë, where several hotels and hundreds of villas would be built, according to the plan.
Kushner’s participation would be through his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which has $2 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, among other foreign investors. In a statement, an official with Affinity Partners said it had not been determined whether the Saudi funds might be a part of any project Kushner is considering in the Balkans.
“We are very excited,” Kushner said in an interview. “We have not finalized these deals, so they might not happen, but we have been working hard and are pretty close.”