Dearest Gentle Reader,

Lets also go over the two specific risks that Albanian experts raised and what they might mean for the other projects. We can finally start to connect this puzzle piece with the Arabization drama.

The pre-sale and third party investor schemes, could in theory, create back-channels in which informal money could enter the project. This is interesting as we know the majority of the purchasers are diaspora (or foreigners).

A little backstory here. According to the World Bank, a significant portion of Albania’s population lives abroad and sends money home — remittances that account for roughly 8% of GDP. Much of this money circulates informally and outside of the banking system. The Albanian government had previously explored an amnesty to bring this informal money into the official economy, but international organizations pushed back as such a scheme cannot distinguish between an ordinary worker’s undeclared savings and genuinely criminality.

The project could, in affect, be a back-channel legalization of this policy.

What’s more interesting is the golden passport clause. The framework agreement explicitly states: “Foreign investors who purchase directly from the Strategic Investor’s property in the Project will be entitled to apply for citizenship and/or permanent residency of the Republic of Albania”

We can say now in tandem that presale financing model and the citizenship clause is that buyers are likely not purchasing apartments to live in them. They are purchasing Albanian citizenship, or investment vehicles, or channels through which to move money into EU-adjacent real estate. This is precisely the “Arabization” pattern documented in Serbia and Latvia.

The big question now is whether these findings are present in the other deals.

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