{"id":206954,"date":"2026-04-23T05:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T05:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/206954\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T05:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T05:46:10","slug":"behind-former-nyc-mayors-quest-for-a-new-passport-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/206954\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind former NYC mayor\u2019s quest for a new passport \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a post on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DXGuSVpjbxy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">social media<\/a>, Pullazi described the former mayor as a \u201cgreat friend of the Albanians,\u201d a \u201cpolitician known for his focus on public affairs,\u201d and \u201ca former captain of the New York Police Department.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Albanian passport, ranked 43rd globally in 2025 by the Henley Passport Index, grants the holder visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 123 countries. While Albania isn\u2019t in the European Union, the country\u2019s passport grants access to the bloc\u2019s free-travel Schengen area for up to 90 days. As for in-country benefits, Adams will be able to live and work in Albania, vote, buy arable land, use the local health service and even run for office in local or national elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In fact, speculation has been rife locally that Adams could be poised to run for mayor of Tirana, as the incumbent mayor, Erion Veliaj, has been in prison for over a year, facing corruption and financial misconduct charges.<\/p>\n<p>But one individual close to Adams, granted anonymity to speak freely about him, said this is not the case. The person said they had heard no talk of Adams running for public office in Albania and that it is their understanding Adams is getting citizenship for local business reasons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think he has better options, let\u2019s put it like that,\u201d the person said, referring to the Tirana mayoralty.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Alisa Roever, a former model and a friend of Adams who runs a charity with his brother, agreed there\u2019s no way the former mayor is running for public office in Albania. \u201cTotally out of the question,\u201d Roever said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a post on social media, Pullazi described the former mayor as a \u201cgreat friend of the Albanians,\u201d&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32249,19688,7022,32251,416,9,56,63,65,64,6315,901],"class_list":{"0":"post-206954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-albania","9":"tag-citizenship","10":"tag-corruption","11":"tag-edi-rama","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-nyc-headlines","17":"tag-nyc-news","18":"tag-tourism","19":"tag-united-states"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}