Albanian prosecutors said on Saturday they had sought the arrest of 20 people suspected of drug trafficking and money laundering, some of whom media said may be linked to a resort project owned by relatives of Donald Trump.
Opposition to plans for a luxury resort linked to the US president’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner has sparked daily mass protests in the Balkan country over the past two weeks.
Protesters are demanding a halt to projects in the Zvernec coastal reserve and the uninhabited island of Sazan, as well as the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor against Corruption and Organized Crime said in a statement on Saturday that an investigation into international cocaine trafficking revealed that several individuals were involved in “alleged operations to conceal the origin of assets and integrate illicit proceeds into the formal economy.”
SPAK said it had asked the court to order the arrest of 20 people, but as of Saturday, only four had been arrested. It made no mention of Zvernec’s project.
– Asset seizure –
The court ordered the preventive seizure of “several assets related to the sales contract,” the statement said.
The company said the contracts involved persons with the initials A.Sh., FS and BS, as well as “company ‘A…L…D…Sha.a.'”.
“The amount of preventive seizure exceeds 128.4 million euros,” the statement said.
Prosecutors said some of the suspicious investments involved real estate and construction projects in Tirana, Parasay and Himara, as well as other coastal areas.
The company identified by prosecutors as “A…L…D…Sha.a.” may be the Albanian Land Development Company.
Public documents from Albania’s commercial registry seen by AFP show the company has purchased large tracts of land in Zvernek that appear to match those involved in tourism projects described by Ivanka Trump in a recent podcast.
“We have five miles of beach front facing the island, a beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side and the ocean on the other, and a beautiful white sand beach,” she said.
Ash. It could be Artur Shehu, who has been mentioned in several local media reports, including an investigation by the news website Reporter.al.
Shehu was the main seller of land for the Albanian Land Development Company’s tourism complex project, the report said.
AFP contacted SPAK on Saturday afternoon but there was no reply.
Thousands of people have demonstrated every night in recent weeks, including on Saturday, in the capital Tirana against the resort project.
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This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
