Was a Key National Security Institution Penetrated by Organized Crime?
Tirana Times, August 28, 2026 – The arrest of businessman Ergys Agasi has put a new focus on allegations reaching beyond corruption in public procurement, raising broader questions about possible links between political power, business interests and organized crime — and about their alleged penetration of one of the Albanian state’s most strategically sensitive institutions.
Agasi, who had been wanted for months by Albania’s Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organized Crime, or SPAK, was arrested Aug. 26 in the coastal city of Durrës. Prosecutors accuse him and businessman Ermal Beqiraj of being central figures in a structured criminal group that allegedly manipulated contracts at the National Agency for Information Society, known by its Albanian acronym AKSHI.
A notable detail surrounding the arrest has added another layer of interest to the case. At the time he was detained, Agasi was reportedly accompanied by a former senior Albanian police official who was serving as his driver. While that circumstance does not in itself establish wrongdoing on the part of the former official, it is likely to intensify scrutiny of Agasi’s network of relationships, particularly given the broader allegations concerning his connections to influential figures in state institutions and political circles.
But the significance of Agasi’s arrest goes beyond the procurement case itself.
For several years, Agasi has been portrayed in Albanian public debate as a businessman with unusual access to political power. Most notably, former Deputy Prime Minister Arben Ahmetaj has publicly accused him of acting as an intermediary between criminal groups and Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Those claims have not been established by the AKSHI investigation and the material reviewed for this analysis does not contain evidence proving them. But Agasi’s arrest on organized-crime charges has inevitably brought those earlier allegations back into focus.
In an interview with Italy’s RAI3 television, Ahmetaj went considerably further than alleging political connections. He described Agasi as a “coordinator” of criminal groups acting on behalf of Rama and alleged that figures linked to organized crime had access to the prime minister and government offices.
Ahmetaj later questioned Agasi’s presence alongside Rama during international travel, saying the businessman had accompanied the prime minister to the World Economic Forum in Davos and on a visit to the United Arab Emirates.
The accusations are Ahmetaj’s and remain separate from SPAK’s criminal case. The material provided for this analysis does not include a response from Rama to those specific allegations.
Still, the prosecution’s case gives the controversy a new dimension because investigators are now formally accusing Agasi of involvement in organized criminal activity connected to a critical state institution.
AKSHI is not an ordinary public agency.
It manages key elements of Albania’s digital state infrastructure, including the e-Albania platform through which citizens receive public services, as well as government systems that process sensitive information. Some procurement procedures handled by the institution are classified as state secret.
That makes the investigation particularly sensitive.
If SPAK’s allegations are proven in court, the case would suggest that a network involving private businessmen, senior officials and individuals linked by prosecutors to organized crime was able to exercise influence over procurement inside an institution directly connected to the functioning and security of the Albanian state.
SPAK has investigated 19 procurement procedures at AKSHI with a combined ceiling of about 5.9 billion lek, roughly 59 million euros. Prosecutors allege that contracts were manipulated by predetermining winning companies, inflating tender values and directing millions of euros toward businesses connected to Agasi and Beqiraj.
The allegations describe methods that went far beyond favoritism or conventional corruption.
According to prosecutors, competitors were subjected to pressure, threats and violence. Businesses challenging tender procedures were allegedly forced to withdraw complaints, and investigators have also included a case in which a businessman was allegedly deprived of his liberty and threatened in an effort to make him abandon a challenge to a tender.
Agasi faces accusations including illegal competition through violence, unlawful deprivation of liberty, violating equality in public procurement, participation in a structured criminal group and money laundering.
The investigation also extends to the highest levels of AKSHI.
Former director Mirlinda Karçanaj and deputy director Hava Delibashi were placed under house arrest. Prosecutors allege that senior officials enabled the group to control procurement funds, predetermine winners and channel large amounts of public money toward companies linked to Agasi and Beqiraj.
Such allegations carry particular weight because a number of the contracts were conducted under procedures classified as state secret. The combination of alleged organized-crime methods, senior officials and procurement inside an institution managing sensitive government infrastructure turns what might otherwise be treated as a corruption case into a wider question of institutional and national security.
Agasi’s public profile adds another layer to the case.
Media reports cited in the material describe him as a businessman from Durrës involved in cigarette production and logistics and as a figure repeatedly discussed because of his alleged connections to criminal groups and his access to senior political circles.
The circumstances of his arrest are also likely to attract further attention. His reported association at the moment of detention with a former senior police official serving as his driver may raise additional questions about the extent and character of the personal and institutional networks surrounding him. There is, however, no basis in the material reviewed here to conclude that the former police official was involved in the alleged AKSHI criminal scheme.
The most serious political allegations have come from Ahmetaj, himself a former senior member of Rama’s government.
Speaking to RAI3, Ahmetaj alleged that criminal organizations had developed a system of coordination and explicitly named Agasi as the person who coordinated such groups on Rama’s behalf.
“Is Rama connected to these criminal groups?” Ahmetaj said in the interview before identifying Agasi as what he called their “coordinator.”
Ahmetaj also alleged that Agasi helped coordinate criminal groups for electoral purposes and claimed that figures from several parts of Albania had met Rama at government premises. Those claims have not been established in court and are not presented in the material as findings of SPAK.
That distinction is critical.
SPAK’s case concerns alleged criminal activity surrounding AKSHI procurement. Ahmetaj’s statements raise a much broader political accusation: that Agasi occupied a position at the intersection of government, business and organized crime.
The available material does not establish that broader allegation as fact. But the arrest of Agasi on organized-crime charges means that the man at the center of those political accusations is now also a defendant in one of the country’s most significant criminal investigations.
The other principal businessman accused in the case, Ermal Beqiraj, was arrested in France on July 24 after flying a light aircraft into restricted airspace near the Penly nuclear power plant.
SPAK said subsequent investigations by French authorities identified assets believed to have criminal origins. Prosecutors allege that Beqiraj transferred part of the illicit proceeds to France, purchasing a chateau, two apartments and vehicles and depositing more than 2 million euros in bank accounts.
Albanian prosecutors have also sought the seizure of substantial assets linked to people and businesses under investigation. A first-instance special court approved seizures valued at more than 40 million euros, although the Special Court of Appeals later overturned part of SPAK’s requests.
Agasi was the last fugitive wanted in connection with the AKSHI case, according to reporting included in the material. His arrest therefore marks an important stage in the investigation.
But the central questions now extend well beyond whether particular tenders were manipulated.
The case will test prosecutors’ ability to demonstrate how an alleged organized-crime network gained influence over procurement at an institution managing critical state systems; what role senior public officials played; and whether the network’s influence extended beyond financial interests into Albania’s political structures.
It also puts renewed scrutiny on the earlier allegations about Agasi’s relationship with political power — as well as on the wider network of relationships surrounding a businessman whom prosecutors now accuse of playing a central role in a structured criminal group.
For prosecutors, the immediate task is to prove the criminal charges in court. For Albania’s institutions, the larger issue is potentially more consequential: whether organized criminal interests were able to penetrate a body responsible for some of the state’s most sensitive digital infrastructure — and, if so, how far that influence reached.
