The investigation into the way AKSHI tenders were awarded has expanded significantly. It now focuses on private companies, the administration, structured criminal groups, as well as the suspected links between these elements and the Police and SHISH.
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SPAK developments on September 22, 2026, took the case into a new phase, after the name of former SHISH director Vlora Hyseni was also brought into it. Her involvement is linked to suspected communications with people from the criminal underworld and has raised serious questions about national security.
Ergys Agasi and Ermal Beqiraj are at the center of the case file. The investigative materials also mention former AKSHI director Mirlinda Karçanaj and former Police official Erjon Ismaili.
On September 24, 2026, the Special Court against Corruption and Organized Crime imposed house arrest and suspension from duty on Vlora Hyseni. According to SPAK, she is being investigated for aiding the perpetrator of a crime and disclosing secret data.
Materials published by the media, referring to SPAK documents, focus on the number and content of communications between Hyseni and Agasi, as well as the fact that these contacts continued while Agasi was wanted. In December 2025, SPAK imposed security measures on several people, while Agasi and Beqiraj were declared wanted. Agasi was arrested in Albania on August 26, while Beqiraj was arrested in France on July 28, 2026.
Mirlinda Karçanaj is also under investigation. On December 16, 2025, the former AKSHI director was placed under house arrest, which after several weeks was replaced with an obligation to report to the authorities.
As part of the “AKSHI” case file, prosecutors Altin Dumani and Bledar Maksuti also ordered the execution of two other security measures: the arrest of Fatjon Kalluçi, a sector chief at the Scientific Police, and Embro Sulejmani, an employee of “Agroturizëm Kodra e Kuajve” in Durrës.
Kalluçi is accused of disclosing acts or secret data, while Sulejmani is accused of aiding the perpetrator of a crime.
An important turning point in the investigation was the inclusion of businessman Gerond Meçe’s story.
On August 12, 2025, Meçe left his home in Tirana. According to testimony he gave to SPAK, which is cited in the investigative file, a “Land Rover Defender” equipped with police lights stopped near him. People wearing clothing resembling Police and BKH uniforms introduced themselves as justice officials and asked him to get into the vehicle.
“We are SPAK; you have to come with us. Get in the car,” one of them told him, according to Meçe’s testimony.
After several minutes, the businessman realized that he was not facing an official arrest. A hood was placed over his head, and the vehicle headed toward Kërraba and then Elbasan.
In the Gracen area, the kidnappers demanded his phone code and showed him documents that, according to him, linked the abduction to his company’s activity in AKSHI tenders. These were procedures for which the company had filed complaints with the Public Procurement Commission.
He was told to withdraw the complaints and no longer participate in the bidding. Meçe said he also realized he had been kidnapped because the people who had presented themselves as BKH employees did not know how to put handcuffs on him.
After agreeing to withdraw the complaints, he was released in a rural area of Elbasan County. After six hours in captivity, they dropped him off near the roundabout leading to the Tirana–Elbasan highway, near Bradashesh. One of them threatened him, saying: “I don’t want trouble from you, I don’t want complaints from you; otherwise we will kill you, your wife, your sister, your mother. You don’t have a father.”
According to SPAK’s suspicions, the kidnapping was part of a mechanism aimed at removing a rival from procurement procedures. Ergys Agasi and Ermal Beqiraj have been mentioned in this connection, while investigators are also trying to determine the role of other people.
“When the complaints filed by Gerond Meçe, in his capacity as a partner in the company ‘Advanced Business Solutions-ABS,’ created a mechanism blocking the completion of procurement procedures at AKSHI, he was forcibly taken hostage and compelled to withdraw from all the procedures he had challenged,” the SPAK file states.
The prosecution assesses that Meçe’s withdrawal of his complaints before the Public Procurement Commission would have created major advantages for Agasi and Beqiraj in continuing their criminal activity in public procurement. According to SPAK, in some cases this activity had been obstructed by complaints from “Advanced Business Solutions-ABS.”
Analysis of video footage and transcribed conversations has, according to prosecutors, created suspicions of a scheme involving the predetermination of procedures, the creation of advantages and illegal profit. Some communications contain expressions such as “the project is worth 2 million; we’ll make it 4” and “It doesn’t even qualify as experience,” which, according to SPAK, relate to setting the tender criteria and the values of the contracts that were to be published.
Erjon Ismaili’s name appears in the line of inquiry involving the Police. Meçe stated that, before the kidnapping, Erjon Ismaili, the suspended deputy director of the Tirana Police, had warned him to stay away from AKSHI tenders. This testimony was used to investigate his links to the suspected group. In December 2025, it was reported that Ismaili had been suspended from duty.
According to the accusations, the matter did not concern only companies competing for public contracts, but involved a triangle linking business, the administration and the Police. Page 31 of SPAK’s material mentions a conversation between Ergys Agasi and Ermal Beqiraj about two tenders in progress, in which Gerond Meçe’s company “ABS” also appears. The communication indicates the concern of the people under investigation about the company’s presence in the bidding.
Another chapter of the case file concerns Agasi’s communications with SHISH director Vlora Hyseni. Materials seized during the investigation, particularly after Agasi’s phone was decrypted, have revealed hundreds of calls, messages and video calls between them while he was wanted.
Some of the contacts date from late June until the days before Agasi’s arrest on August 26, 2026. Personal terms of address such as “darling” and “sweetheart” also appear in the communications. In other cases, Hyseni sent Agasi information about her official meetings and movements.
In one message made public, Hyseni writes that she needs to meet with the “PM.” In another, she mentions a meeting with the director of the State Police and expresses hope that he had received instructions from the prime minister. These contacts have been included in the new line of investigation.
Thus, the AKSHI case file and the matter involving Hyseni and Agasi are presented as two intertwined chapters. One part concerns suspicions of manipulated competition in public tenders and the kidnapping of a businessman to force him to withdraw his complaints. The other concerns a wanted person who continued communicating with the head of SHISH and, according to the published materials, received information from her about official activity.
Ermal Beqiraj, Mirlinda Karçanaj and Erjon Ismaili are mentioned in this network, while Ergys Agasi is presented as the link connecting several of the episodes. Beqiraj appears as one of the main business figures in the scheme under investigation; Karçanaj as the institutional link at AKSHI; Ismaili in the line involving the Police; and Meçe as the businessman who, according to the case file, was pressured to withdraw from the bidding and drop his complaints. Vlora Hyseni has become part of the investigation because of her communications with Agasi and suspicions related to classified information.
In describing the suspected corruption and money-laundering scheme in AKSHI tenders, SPAK mentions Agasi, Karçanaj, Beqiraj and a network of companies linked to them. According to the case file, the mechanism is suspected of relying on predetermined tenders, fictitious invoices and the transfer of public funds to companies controlled by the people under investigation.
Based on the investigation and the Special Court’s decision to seize assets, Agasi is suspected of having received more than 9 million euros in bribes between 2023 and 2025 for his influence in predetermining AKSHI tenders.
Prosecutors suspect that Ergys Agasi, Ermal Beqiraj and other as-yet-unidentified people committed the criminal offenses of “Unlawful deprivation of liberty” and “Unlawful competition through violence,” as part of a special formation, a “structured criminal group,” as well as criminal offenses committed by a criminal organization and a structured criminal group.
Regarding Mirlinda Karçanaj, SPAK cites suspicions of “Violation of the equality of participants in tenders or public auctions,” committed in the special form of a structured criminal group, as well as “Structured criminal group” and “Commission of criminal offenses by a criminal organization and a structured criminal group.”
The investigative documents show that former minister Damian Gjiknuri was also mentioned in this story. In communications dated 06.03.2019 with former MP Alqi Bllako, Ergys Agasi speaks of a “situation” in which Gjiknuri was allegedly creating “obstacles” to the group’s illegal profits.
SPAK identified Elgerti Bixha as the person referred to in conversations by the name “Labi.” According to the case file, Agasi intended to appoint Bixha as administrator of a private company that had won a concession from the ministry headed by Gjiknuri at the time.
The investigation emphasizes that Gjiknuri was seen as an obstacle to these profits and that the communications discussed other forms of pressure aimed at eliminating it. In a message dated 06.03.2019 at 21:54:43, Agasi writes: “I’ll f*** them, then we’ll send the boys.”
According to SPAK, this expression is interpreted as a reference to using links with people posing a high social danger to exert pressure and remove obstacles to the group’s interests.
The case file links this episode to the kidnapping of Gerond Meçe and says that the same “modus operandi” had previously been used against former minister Gjiknuri, through numerous complaints to the Public Procurement Commission, with the aim of blocking procurement procedures at the National Agency of Information Society (AKSHI).
SPAK assesses that the deliberate creation of administrative obstacles, pressure and the use of informal networks constitute a persistent criminal scheme built on the same modus operandi.
