Dua Lipa and Ivanka Trump go head to head in Albania | If You're Listening

A lot of stories involving Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner start on a yacht, and this one is no exception.We were on our friend Nat Rothschild's boat.

We were on a friend's boat and we stopped for a swim.

Sorry, they say boat there, which makes it sound like something that you can load onto a trailer and park outside your house.But Nat Rothschild's boat cannot fit on a trailer.It's called Planet Nine and it's so big that it has two separate libraries and a garage to store other boats and a helicopter in.Anyway, Nat, Ivanka and Jared were out on this boat.

We got picked up in Montenegro and then we started sailing over to Corfu and we spent a couple days in Albania.One of the nights there, Prime Minister Rama came to the boat.

You know, you're on a boat and the Prime Minister of Albania pops in.Totally normal, relatable story.Anyway, they're sailing up the coast of Albania and they come across this island.

We swam to the islands.We went on a hike.barefoot all the way up to the top.And we were just captivated.And it stayed with us ever since.

Now, the way Ivanka describes this place kind of makes it sound like she discovered an untouched place.private island.

It's an unbelievable, beautiful, 1400 hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean.And we stopped for a swim.Effectively, that's how we found it.

Reality is what she found was a publicly owned island, which was the site of a former naval base and is now a regular day trip spot for Albanians.It's kind of like saying she went for a swim in San Francisco Harbor and found Alcatraz Island.But this beautiful island clearly had an impact on the pair.Jared Kushner says that he later traveled to Vlore, the town on the mainland, which is closest to the island.

Obviously, a country is going to build an airport by the coast in the place that they think is the most beautiful.So we went there.We looked for opportunities.and we were able to find some incredible, incredible opportunities.

So here's the opportunity he's talking about.Jared and Ivanka are hoping to build a large luxury resort on both the island and the mainland coastline nearest to it.But they have a bit of a problem.It seems like a lot of Albanians don't like this idea.Throughout this year's hot Mediterranean summer, thousands of Albanians have been taken to the streets, protesting angrily against the proposed resort development and demanding that the Prime Minister, the one who met Jared on that boat, resign from his office.Now, luxury resorts aren't uncommon in this part of the Mediterranean.

So why is this one causing months of angry protests?Is it just because it's Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner?Whereas there's something deeper going on here.Spoiler alert, there is something much deeper going on here.I'm Matt Beavan, and this is If You're Listening.This is the Italian version of the game show Jeopardy.

It's hosted by a guy named Mike Bongiorno, which sounds like a fake name made up by someone who was pressed to make up a name for an Italian game show host at short notice.Back in the 1970s, this was one of the most popular shows on Italian TV.But little did Mike Bongiorno know, he had a slightly larger audience than his ratings would suggest.Across 75 kilometres of water, on the other side of the Adriatic Sea, the people of Albania were building giant homemade aerials so they could pick up Mike on their TVs.See, for most of the Cold War era, Albanian television was entirely free of any entertainment equipment.It was just the most dour, depressing communist propaganda imaginable.

So people reached across the sea with their giant wobbly aerials in search of entertainment.

So what are we to do for entertainment?We started watching Italian channels.

Albanian expat Ossida Sheshi told podcaster Abbas Wahab that people were so desperate for entertainment that they learned Italian to watch it.

So even the grandmas, even the old people started learning Italian.

Everyone.

Everyone started learning Italian just by watching, like nobody was learning Italian through books.OK, just by watching the TV.

Communist Albania during the Cold War was unique in its level of isolation and dreariness.Albania's dictator Enver Hoxha viewed any form of popular entertainment as anti -communist and any interaction with the outside world as evil.

Enver Hoxha presided over a state with no religion, no taxes and no private cars.

Nothing less than full -blown Stalinism would do.Under Hoxha, Albania was entirely isolated.A hermit kingdom with absolutely no connection to the outside world.They were even more isolated than, like, North Korea today.They had no visitors, and regular Albanian citizens were not permitted to leave the country.

For nearly half a century, time seems to have stood still in Albania.It's the poorest country in Europe, and has so far managed to repress large -scale popular opposition.

Hoxha died in 1985, after 41 years in power, and was given a dour, depressing state funeral.

As the sun rises over Albania's capital city, Tirana, nothing immediately suggests that this isolated nation is preparing to escape from the pine capsule in which its leaders chose to place it.

His successor had a slightly different vibe and wanted to turn things around for Albania.So he began opening up the country.

Europe's last Marxist state, Albania, has unveiled a package of human rights reforms.

By the end of 1990, communism was overthrown, and Albania was suddenly a capitalist democracy.

In fact, the last bastion of Stalinism has gone, just like the last statue of the former Soviet dictator.

The thing is, though, Albanians had been far more isolated than any of the other new capitalist democracies of the 1990s.They were unique in that they had virtually no understanding of the way that capitalism actually works.The country had no market economics or private investment at all.Their capitalistic savvy was limited to what they could glean from Mike Bongiorno and other Italian game show hosts.As a result, no population in modern history has been more vulnerable to the arrival of a wallet inspector than early 1990s Albanians.A wallet inspector?

Oh, here you go.I believe that's all in order.I can't believe that worked.So let me introduce you to the wallet inspector.In 1996 Albanians still mostly watched Italian TV.Their new democratic government hadn't quite sorted out their own high -quality TV yet.

So they watched Formula One with Italian commentary.And during the broadcastthey would have seen advertising for the company called Vifa on the edge of the track, both at the Italian and San Marino Grand Prix.But here's the thing.Vifa was not an Italian company.It was an Albanian company.

More specifically, it was a financial company which promised a high rate of return on investments made by Albanian people.Well, actually, high rate of return might be underselling it a bit.If you invested your money into Vifa, they promised those savings would grow by 8 % every month.This was in a year where the S &P 500 global benchmark was going up by about 1 .9 % per month, but Vifa was promising 8%.This meant if you could raise say $100 ,000 to put into the Vifa scheme in January, by the following January you would have $250 ,000 in your account.But Vifa wasn't alone with these wild deals.

Vifa's competitors were offering even better rates, up to 47 % per month.At that rate, your $100 ,000 investment would become $10 million in a year.Now, if you've grown up with a healthy scepticism of get -rich -quick schemes, you're unlikely to be fooled by this kind of insane promise.But in Albania, where they didn't really have a whole lot of scepticism about these sorts of things, it seemed like the promise of capitalism had come true.

One in three Albanians are said to have invested their life savings in the get -rich -quick schemes.

It was actually more than half.According to some reports, it was two -thirds of the entire adult population.Albanians dumped their life savings into these schemes.They mortgaged their homes.They sold their possessions.all to raise as much capital as possible to put into their investment accounts.

Now it probably won't surprise you to hear that these schemes did not actually deliver on those returns.They were nothing more than Ponzi schemes, where early investors returns were provided by a direct transfer of money from those who entered into the scheme later.In just a few years, the frenzy of investment into these schemes had put Albania's fledgling economy in an extremely dangerous position.By mid -1996, international financial agencies were starting to panic, sending delegations to Albania to personally warn President Salih Barisha that he was on the verge of a catastrophe.By then, more than half of Albania's GDP had been invested in the schemes.At the end of that year, The schemes started to collapse.

Albania was the most closed, most backward of Europe's communist countries.And now it's finding that the path to capitalism is not always paved with gold.

One after another, the schemes announced that actually they couldn't keep paying out their promised returns because All the money was gone.

The whole country has been shaken by the collapse of a number of pyramid saving schemes.The government is being blamed for not protecting its people, even of profiting from the schemes.

The government is absolutely not involved.The country looked on the verge of collapse.An exodus began with thousands of Albanians boarding boats to try and get to Italy.People were becoming ill. desperate.

This woman had sold everything she had and sank the proceeds into one of Albania's pyramid investment schemes.When the scheme collapsed, she'd lost the lot.Now her children

Those who stayed were angry and a protest movement began, focused on one particular town on Albania's coast.

In the troubled port town of Vlore, these protests have become a daily event.Last week it exploded in anger and four people died amid chaotic scenes.

As in the town that Jared Kushner has been flying in and out of while he looked for resort opportunities.

And we were immediately drawn to where they were building an airport in Vlore.And obviously a country is going to build an airport by the coast in the place that they think is the most beautiful.

Yes, that Vlore.But back in the 90s, Vlore was a very different place.

Vlore is the seat of the anti -government rebellion.

Within a few weeks of the collapse of the schemes in early 1997, the town was under mob rule.

Angry protesters have taken control of several Albanian towns.

I have been working for seven years and I lose everything.I lose everything.So now the point is that we I don't want any political solution.I want my money.

The people of Vlore weren't satisfied.They wanted President Barisa to resign too.They decided to make that clear by paying a visit to his villa just outside Vlore.

Looters have descended on his summer palace, stripping it of anything they can carry away.

Albania appears to be on the verge of civil war tonight, with a growing anti -government insurrection in the south.The focus is the Adriatic port of Vlore.

But protesters, or I guess rebels by this stage, began preparations to fight the government by looting army weapons depots and gathering hundreds of thousands of firearms.

Just down the road we met two young men who willingly displayed the spoils they took from the local army stores a few days ago.A trusty Kalashnikov and a couple of grenades.

As the rebels clashed with the authorities, President Barisha began making concessions to his opponents, hoping that it would calm everything down.

The key post of prime minister has gone to the main opposition socialists in a new government of national unity.

Then Albania's neighbours got involved.Italy was appointed to lead a UN peacekeeping delegation to Albania.

We have a moral duty.They are our neighbours.They are in the Mediterranean area.They are a problem for us.

Fortunately, a full -blown civil war was averted.But the Albanian people remained largely destitute.Making matters worse, the enormous quantity of guns that had been looted from the army were still at large.

Looted weapons are being used in robberies, traditional blood feuds and to settle arguments.

They say they'll give them up when they're sure there's someone in charge they trust.I'll decide when I give these weapons back, he says.I won't do it just because some politician tells me to.

Just seven years after Albanians won their freedom from communist dictatorial rule, Unregulated capitalism had virtually destroyed the country.

Albania developed a reputation for chaos, people and weapons smuggling and as a hub of international organised crime run by a mafia operating in the shadows.

The country's future was extremely unclear.What was clear to most Albanians, though, was that get -rich -quick schemes could not be trusted.But there was some hope for them yet.

A lot of Albanians scramble to survive, but their country is on a hopeful path of integration with the European Union.The land of eagles is a candidate.to become a member.

The group of countries which joined the EU in 2004 had all seen boosts to their economies, and Albania wanted a piece of that.But applying to become a member of the European Union isn't an easy process.You have to do a lot of work on yourself before they'll let you in.

The biggest part of the project was to support these countries in their efforts to meet European standards.

The work on strengthening the rule of law, the work on fighting the corruption, and strengthen the independence of judiciary is ongoing work.

When Albania applied to become a member of the EU in 2009, the average length of time it took from application to membership was about eight years.But after four years, they had made no progress at all.In fact, talks had stalled entirely.This was mostly not Albania's fault.The global financial crisis had made the EU suddenly hyper cautious about admitting new countries to the union.But still, Albanians were frustrated by the government's inability to make progress.

So they started looking for a man of action to take over.His name is Eddie Rama and he's on a mission.Eddie Rama has been at the forefront of Albanian politics ever since he became mayor of the capital Tirana in 2000.By any measure, Eddie is no ordinary mayor.

A rap -singing former basketballer who once lived the life of a painter in Paris.

He talked about the first time he walked into Tirana City Hall as being like walking into a bureaucratic nightmare.

When I entered here I felt like entering a Kafka book, you know.It was like amazing.I entered here and I said, my God, what I'll do here.

He said the haze of cigarette smokethrough the halls made the place feel like it was filled with a fog that slowed everything down.He banned smoking in City Hall, which was kind of a surprise because most of what he says kind of sounds like it's coming from a 70s bohemian with a cigarette lazily hanging from between his fingers.

more thrilling.I don't feel that art is an angelic work and I don't feel that politics is a devil work by definition.Devil is everywhere and angel is everywhere.

Okay, Michelangelo, if you say so.Rama's most famous policy was painting the drab Cold War era buildings of Tirana in bright colours.

With a painter turned politician as mayor, the city's drab architecture has had a makeover.

Did he fix Tirana?Not entirely.But when the country was looking for a man of action as the process of joining the EU dragged on, this is the guy they picked to replace the longtime leader, Salih Barisha.

Albania's opposition leader, Edi Rama, has claimed a landslide election victory.Rama is calling on Prime Minister Salih Barisha to concede defeat.

A big part of Rama's strategy as prime minister was to promote tourism.Albania.Go your own way.Tourist visitors to Albania have quadrupled since he took office, up from about three million per year in 2013 to more than 12 million now.But while he's pushed hard to expedite the process of joining the EU, they still aren't a member of the club.Albania remains one of the poorest countries in the region, which is why when a very, very big stack of

money arrived on a yacht with multiple libraries, Eddie Rama was very, very interested.One of the nights there, Prime Minister Rama came to the boat.

Apparently, Jared Kushner in particular was quite taken by Rama's charms.One of the cool things I was attracted to is the fact that he seemed like a very skilled politician, as a very strong and smart leader, but also the fact that he was an artist.I thought it'd be very cool to see what a country really led and built by an artist could be somebody with amazing taste and great creativity.

And it turns out that Rama was pretty taken with Kushner too, or at least he was pretty taken with the eye -watering amount of money on offer, which is why Rama's government rushed through approval for Ivanka and Jared's proposed developments.He declared that Albania needs luxury tourism like a desert needs water.By cutting red tape and designating Kushner's development company as a strategic investor, Rama has cleared the way for a reported $4 .7 billion, four and a half square kilometre resort.It includes more than a thousand villas and townhouses, 1400 apartments, a casino, a golf course, a water park, and a marina designed for mooring super yachts, sorry, boats.The development is the size of an international airport and it's being planned for a site that currently is an untouched nature reserve.Rama says the tourists who visit this massive five star resort will inject enormous amounts of money into the Albanian economy.

The trouble is that a lot of Albanians really don't support the regulatory shortcuts that have made this possible, including one very famous Albanian.

We can't talk about the history of Albania without talking a little bit about it.about Albania today.And I'm sure that a lot of people listening will have heard about all the protests that are happening right now.

This is the international pop star Dua Lipa, who is an Albanian citizen, talking on her podcast about the protests against Jared and Ivanka's proposed luxury resort.

I have to say, I find it so inspiring to see how much people really care, you know, day after day, they're like hitting the streets.because the government has opened up this part of a beautiful nature reserve to a high -end beachfront development.

The beautiful nature reserve is the lagoon next to the city of Loray and the island a few kilometres off the coast.Environmental groups consider this lagoon to be an incredibly important habitat for endangered animals like the loggerhead turtle and the monk seal.It's also a key nesting spot for flamingos while they're migrating between Europe and Africa.The protest movement against the development has become known as the Flamingo Revolution.For Dua Lipa, the concern is that the government is not acting in the best interests of the Albanian people, or the flamingos.Ivanka Trump disagrees.

She believes that if they clear 5km of protected natural habitat in a tasteful, architectural way, then It's actually fine.

We developed the opportunity to help realise its potential and transform it, but with a lot of restraint and care because the land is so beautiful that really the architecture has to be fully integrated into it, almost rise from it.

I guess the flamingos could just book some villas to stay at during their migration.For the protesters, though, it's not really about the turtles or the seals or the flamingos.It's about the government prioritising what they see as another shiny get -rich -quick scheme over the wellbeing of the country.

This Prime Minister should leave and it's not about any more flamingos.It's about healthcare, it's about education, it's about people getting poorer and poorer every day.It's about people leaving their country.because they don't want to live here.

We need to take Albania back and to make it great again.

We are here for justice.We are here to destroy this corrupt system.

The reason they think that the entire system is corrupt is because support for Jarrod and Ivanka's project is actually bipartisan.Prime Minister Rama supports it, obviously, but so does the opposition leader, Sali Barisa, the guy who was in charge of the country during the pyramid scheme era through the 1990s.Here's where we've ended up.Both the opposition leader and the prime minister.Two veterans of Albanian politics who've been at war with each other for years, who otherwise agree on almost nothing, agree on this.The thousands of protesters who are taking to the streets night after night don't really have a voice apart from their own.

And yet they can see a pattern emerging.30 years ago they were sold the idea that they could live like the fabulous Italians on their TV screens if they just handed over all their savings.Their government facilitated it, despite warnings from foreign financial organisations that they were doing something crazy.This time, the idea they're being sold is that a relationship with the Trump family is a quick route to prosperity.All they have to do is hand over their land and a bit of their sovereignty.Once again, the government is not doing anything to stop it, despite warnings from foreign bureaucrats.

The difference is, this time, the Albanian people aren't naive.They have real concerns that they're being sold another get rich quick.scheme and this time they are not buying it.