# Albanian Influence > [!note] Scope > This page covers **Albania's influence operations directed at the United States** — lobbying, funding, information operations and elite capture. > For the country itself see [[Albania]]. Albania is the smallest state in this folder, but it earns its file on a distinction none of the Gulf heavyweights can match: it is the vault's cleanest documented case of a **two-directional influence circuit** running through Trump world simultaneously. Money flows *out* of Albania to Trump-connected operatives and lobbyists (the opposition's $6 million [[Continental Strategy]] contract), and Albanian state assets flow *to* the Trump family's businesses (the Rama government's grant of Sazan Island to [[Affinity Partners]]). Both major Albanian parties — nominally bitter enemies — independently concluded that the path to power or favor runs through the same American family. What Albania lacks in scale it supplies in legibility: every mechanism this folder tracks elsewhere at billion-dollar opacity appears here in miniature, on the record, with prosecutors already attached. ## The Berisha Circuit: Buying a Sanctions Reversal [[Sali Berisha]] — former president, former prime minister, and leader of the Democratic Party of Albania — was designated persona non grata by the Biden State Department in **May 2021** under Section 7031(c) for "significant corruption," barring him and his immediate family from U.S. entry. The arc of his rehabilitation is a FARA case study. | Date | Event | |------|-------| | **May 2021** | Secretary of State Blinken designates Berisha and family under 7031(c) for significant corruption and "undermining democracy in Albania" | | **January 2025** | Berisha announces he will petition [[Donald Trump]] to review the designation | | **February 2025** | The Democratic Party of Albania signs a **two-year, $6 million contract** with [[Continental Strategy]] — the party appears as a foreign principal on the firm's [[FARA]] registration (#7545); the firm contacts the State Department on the party's behalf | | **Spring 2025** | [[Chris LaCivita]] runs the Democratic Party's campaign — rallies, TV ads, public appearances — under the slogan-echo "Make Albania Great Again"; [[Paul Manafort]] is reported among the ex-Trump aides involved | | **April 27, 2025** | Albania's Special Prosecution Against Corruption (SPAK) opens an investigation into the **source of funds** behind the $6M lobbying contract | | **May 11, 2025** | Berisha loses anyway: [[Edi Rama]]'s Socialists take 83 of 140 seats, their strongest result ever; Berisha's alliance falls to 50 and he alleges the vote was stolen | | **June 12, 2026** | The State Department **lifts the designation**, issuing waivers for "certain 7031(c) designations imposed during the previous administration" on grounds of "compelling national interest" | The sequence — sanctioned politician hires Trump-world firm, firm lobbies State, State reverses the sanction — is the transaction this folder exists to document. The election loss makes the case *cleaner*, not weaker: the lobbying failed at its electoral objective but still delivered the sanctions reversal, demonstrating that the product being sold was access to the administration, not votes. Berisha, for his part, framed the reversal ideologically, declaring that Trump was "freeing" U.S. foreign policy from [[George Soros]] — grafting American right-wing demonology onto Balkan politics. ## Sazan Island: The Family-Business Channel While the opposition bought the lobbying channel, the governing Socialists opened the family-business channel. The [[Edi Rama]] government granted [[Jared Kushner]]'s [[Affinity Partners]] development rights for **Sazan Island** — a formerly closed Albanian military island — plus the protected Zvërnec/Narta Lagoon coastal zone, in a package reported at **$1.4 billion** for the island (locally dubbed "Trump Island") and up to ~$1.6 billion for the broader resort program, with figures for the full coastal agreement running higher still. [[Ivanka Trump]] has a **direct role in negotiations** per congressional oversight reporting — documented in this vault in [[Trump Family]] and her profile. The deal's enabling move came earlier: **2024 legislative amendments** that changed the status of protected areas to permit resort development. By mid-2026 the project had become a national flashpoint: - **Late May 2026** — protests outside government offices in Tirana: "Albania is not for sale," "Cancel the project," and "Ivanka, go home." CBS reported the protests snowballing into a broader anti-corruption movement. - **June 1, 2026** — SPAK opens a second Trump-world-adjacent investigation, this one into the protected-status changes and land ownership behind the Sazan project. - **No final plan** had been submitted to the Albanian government as of June 2026, yet excavators had already begun cutting access routes and fencing land in the Narta zone. - **EU dimension** — Rama has promised EU membership by 2030; Newsweek and others framed the Kushner deal as a direct risk to the accession bid, putting Brussels and Trump-family commercial interests in open tension. The strategic logic on the Albanian side mirrors the Gulf playbook at 1/100th scale: a small state purchasing goodwill with the ruling family through a sovereign asset, priced not by market value but by political value. Rama — a Socialist who hosted [[Giorgia Meloni]]'s offshore asylum-processing centers (the "Albania deal" studied by American immigration hardliners) — has proven ideologically omnivorous about courting the Western right when state interests demand it. ## Why Both Parties Bought In The remarkable feature of the Albanian case is its symmetry. The government and the opposition, who agree on nothing domestically, each independently routed their American strategy through Trump world: | Channel | Buyer | Vehicle | Deliverable sought | Status | |---------|-------|---------|--------------------|--------| | Lobbying/consulting | Democratic Party (opposition) | [[Continental Strategy]] $6M contract + [[Chris LaCivita]] campaign | Sanctions reversal, election win, US legitimacy | Sanctions lifted June 2026; election lost; SPAK probe open | | Family business | Rama government (Socialists) | Sazan Island / coastal concessions to [[Affinity Partners]] | Goodwill with the administration, investment, EU-US balance | Earthworks begun; SPAK probe open; mass protests | For a country of 2.7 million with a GDP smaller than Vermont's, this is a rational read of how U.S. policy is actually made in the current era — and that read, replicated across dozens of small states, is itself a finding about the system being read. ## Significance Albania matters to this folder not for its weight but for its clarity. It shows the full menu of Trump-era influence purchasing operating in one small country at once: a FARA-registered lobbying contract with a named price and a named deliverable; a campaign-consulting export of MAGA methodology by the men who ran the 2024 race; a sanctions reversal that followed the retainer; and a sovereign-asset transfer to the presidential family with a named negotiator. Two separate SPAK corruption investigations — one per channel — give the case the prosecutorial paper trail that Gulf-scale equivalents rarely generate. When the vault needs a teaching example of how foreign influence works in both directions, Albania is the miniature with everything visible. ## See Also - [[Continental Strategy]] - [[Affinity Partners]] - [[Trump Family]] - [[Sali Berisha]] - [[Edi Rama]] - [[Chris LaCivita]] - [[Paul Manafort]] - [[FARA Registrant Map]] - [[Foreign Influence Ecosystem]]