A waterfront mansion on Miami Beach’s exclusive Flamingo Drive seems an unlikely place to become the headquarters of one of the Balkans’ most contentious real estate battles.
But according to a sweeping investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), that’s exactly where Albanian developer Artur Shehu directed a yearslong effort to acquire coastal land in his native country — property that now forms the foundation of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s proposed $1.4 billion luxury resort in Albania.
Now Shehu, who owns multimillion-dollar homes in both Miami Beach and North Bay Village and operates a Florida-based real estate business, finds himself at the center of a growing international controversy involving disputed land deals, organized crime allegations, and an Albanian anti-corruption investigation…