The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a report this month on the Albanian corruption case entangling Jared Kushner’s resort project that was co-written by an editor at a newsroom funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, a tie the paper did not disclose to readers.
The August 8 report, “The Suspected Gangster Causing Headaches for Kushner’s Albania Deal,” carried the byline of WSJ staff reporter Eliot Brown and Vladimir Karaj. The story detailed prosecutors’ allegations against Artur Shehu, a landowner who sold property to the Kushner-backed development group before Albanian authorities sought his arrest in a cocaine trafficking and money laundering case.
Karaj is an editor at the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network’s (BIRN) Albania office, which runs the outlet Reporter.al. BIRN’s own donor page states that the Open Society Foundation Albania funds the network’s anti-corruption program “through investigative reporting and closer cooperation between journalists and civil society organizations.” Reporter.al is grant-funded by the same Soros foundation.
The prosecutors’ office driving the case, known as SPAK, traces directly to the same donor network. SPAK was created under Albania’s 2016 justice reform, an overhaul the U.S. backed with roughly $270 million in USAID spending routed through organizations tied to Soros over fifteen years.
Andi Dobrushi, the executive director of OSF Albania, described his foundation’s role plainly.
“OSF Albania has been the main funder of the entire reform process,” Dobrushi said.
Six Republican senators, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), pressed the State Department in 2017 to examine the relationship between USAID and the Soros foundations in Albania. Judicial Watch later obtained embassy records through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation showing the U.S. mission in Tirana gave the Soros organization input into its own program funding reviews.
Open Society has rejected characterizations linking its work to U.S. government money. The foundation called claims that it receives USAID funding or directs the agency’s spending “manifestly false,” saying it sets its own priorities and uses its own funds.
Kushner’s $1.4 billion Sazan Island project faces daily protests in Tirana. Prime Minister Edi Rama, who has been described as Soros-linked and calls Alex Soros his “brother in Tirana,” has vowed the development will proceed.
The Wall Street Journal did not note Karaj’s employer or its funding anywhere in the report.
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