REPUBLISHED

Kastrati built without permits at the former Sheraton; the institutions stayed silent

Erblin Vukaj · Originally published: 10 October 2025

Kastrati Group began and continued expanding the former Sheraton hotel without permits. Citizens.al shows that the authorities turned a blind eye to work that began in 2019, while construction permits were approved in 2021–2022.

A history with no transparency

Officially, on 8 November 2019, Kastrati Group obtained a development permit from the government to expand the MAK Albania hotel building, formerly the Sheraton.

But a development permit does not give permission to build. It only establishes, in principle, how much can be built on a plot and in what form: development density, maximum volume, number of floors and distances from the boundaries.

Permission to build comes only with a construction permit, which in this case, under the procedures delegated by the government, was to be issued by Tirana Municipality.

The construction permit approves the technical design, architecture and specific implementation within the terms of the development permit. It is issued to developers only after payment of the infrastructure impact tax.

Yet satellite imagery and observations on the ground show that a crane had been erected beside the former Sheraton hotel (2019), while the construction site for three of the four development zones (Zones B, C and D) had opened long before the municipality issued the permits.

Citizens.al has learned that Kastrati Group formally applied for a permit on 6 May 2021 and that Tirana Municipality approved it on 6 July 2021 (for Zones A and B, with a permit revision on 10 November 2022) and on 20 June 2022 (for Zones C and D).

This discrepancy between the timing of the actual work and the permits issued may be one reason why Kastrati Group never put up a notice board about the work at the construction site.

The construction, begun with a development permit issued by the National Territorial Council in November 2019, envisaged an integrated complex of hotels, residences and offices.

But in June 2021 changes to the project significantly increased the above-ground floor area, from 69,665 m² to 108,827 m², and the maximum number of storeys from 13 to 15.

The increase in development density was accompanied by a pronounced lack of transparency.

The revised permit also envisaged extending the buildings one floor further underground, to a depth of 5 storeys. But by the time of the revisions, Kastrati Group had made substantial progress with construction.

Drone footage from February–December 2021 shows that work in Zones B, C and D had reached the completion of the structural shells, rising as high as 14 storeys above ground.

During the same period in which construction was beginning or continuing without permits, Kastrati Group was publicly announcing agreements with major international hotel brands such as Hyatt (December 2018) and Hilton (February 2021), promoting the project as a development of strategic importance to Tirana’s urban and tourism image.

This development also began to receive public praise from Mayor Veliaj.

According to official reports, Hyatt was said to be opening a property by the end of 2019 in one of the six towers Kastrati Group was planning beside MAK Albania. Hilton had similar plans for an opening by the end of 2023.

Yet neither of these hotels has opened, although the promised deadlines passed several years ago. Hyatt has recently appeared with an updated year, 2026, on Kastrati Group’s website, while there are no official dates for Hilton.

Citizens.al approached the headquarters of the brands concerned for comment but received no response.

These prolonged delays raise questions about the seriousness of the agreements and lend weight to the suspicion that they may have been used more for image, influence or even as a legitimising cover for the public authorities’ “tolerance” of construction without permits.

Citizens.al also approached the architecture studios Archea and X-Plan to ask whether they remained involved in the project but received no response.

Infrastructure taxes and the absence of oversight

Another opaque aspect of this case concerns the payment of infrastructure taxes.

Kastrati Group appears to have been assessed two taxes totalling around 183 million lek (about 1.6 million euros): one of 138 million lek in the 2021 permit and another of 45 million lek in the 2022 permit.

Tirana Municipality refused to clarify when this tax was paid or the amount of tax for the permit covering Zones C and D.

Meanwhile, although the municipality approved the permits only after the formal applications in 2021–22, the Territorial Protection Inspectorate (IMT) carried out no inspection or proceedings for construction without permits during two years of work.

In a response to Citizens.al, IMT justified this by saying there had been “no complaint or criminal report” concerning the MAK Albania project, implying that, without public pressure or formal reports, construction can slip beyond legal oversight, especially when large business groups are behind it.

A series of companies linked to Kastrati became involved in the former Sheraton Hotel, once owned by the Kuwaiti investor group MAK Albania: Kastrati Residences, Kastrati Hotels & Tower and Kastrati Construction.

The initial project also involved Mak Elite Offices, a company within the Balfin group, which was suspended and deregistered shortly before the second development permit was obtained.

But Kastrati’s towers at the former Sheraton Hotel are more than a story of concrete and glass. They are a clear example of investment made without accountability or oversight: construction proceeds without permits and with design changes that multiply the floor area, all “under the noses” of institutions that fail to do their job.

By contrast, ordinary citizens and small entrepreneurs have repeatedly felt the “iron hand” of the authorities in their declared battle against “informal construction”. This case shows that the policy has applied, and continues to apply, double standards.

Citizens.al formally approached the group for comment on the start of construction before the relevant permits were obtained, the absence of a site notice board and the other disputed issues surrounding the project.

The questions were sent both to official addresses and directly to the head of PR and Marketing. But, at the time of publication, we had received no reply.