On the hot afternoon of August 26, as the sun was setting over Durrës beach, a black Audi was blocked by several unmarked police cars on the highway near the Plepa area.
Të lidhura
None found
Inside was Ergys Agasi, a former Environment Ministry official and businessman whom SPAK accuses of leading an organized criminal group that used every means, from corruption to kidnapping, to control and manipulate public tenders linked to the National Agency for Information Society, AKSHI.
In footage released by the State Police, Agasi is seen wearing a white shirt and shorts, surrounded by officers on one side of the road, with his hands tied behind his back and his head lowered.
Less than a month later, on September 21, the Special Court ordered house arrest and suspension from office for Vlora Hyseni, director of the State Intelligence Service, SHISH. She is suspected of helping Agasi while he was wanted and of possibly passing him classified information.
Former State Police director Ilir Proda has also been questioned by SPAK and, according to media reports, is under investigation over the circumstances of Agasi’s flight and the protection he allegedly received.
Details from the investigative file on Vlora Hyseni, leaked to the media, indicate that the former SHISH chief had developed a romantic relationship with Agasi.
Hyseni denies the allegations and has reportedly explained her communications with the wanted businessman by saying he was a SHISH informant.
But according to former deputy prime minister Arben Ahmetaj, the former Durrës official’s influence extended beyond Hyseni and stemmed from a far more significant political friendship: his relationship with Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Ahmetaj has publicly described Agasi as a “coordinator” between Rama’s government and organized crime groups, an allegation both Agasi and Rama have denied.
Rama himself has not denied knowing Agasi or having a close personal relationship with him, but has insisted that a personal relationship with the prime minister is not a public office and that Agasi had no authorization to act on his behalf.
Although he held no mandate or official position, SPAK’s case file portrays Agasi as a man with direct influence over how public contracts worth millions of euros were awarded. According to prosecutors, that influence brought him substantial financial gains.
The MP’s son
Ergys Agasi was born in Durrës in March 1987. His father, Bardhyl Agasi, served three terms as a Socialist Party MP for Durrës, was deputy chair of the Socialist parliamentary group and secretary of the Committee on Public Information Media.
The earliest traces of Ergys Agasi online relate to business, rather than public administration. In November 2011, at age 24, he appeared as a shareholder and, for a short period, administrator of “Agasi Markoudis Group,” a company based in Durrës whose activities ranged from construction and trade to real estate. The company entered liquidation two years later.
In October 2013, just weeks after the Rama government took office, Agasi appeared publicly as chief environmental inspector during an operation against aggregate companies in Zall Herr. Asset declaration records officially list him as chief inspector of the State Inspectorate of Environment and Forests from February 21, 2014, when he was just 26.
The Environment Ministry was then headed by Lefter Koka, who would later be arrested for corruption and money laundering over his role in the incinerator scandal.
The chief inspector’s post gave Agasi direct contact with businesses, permits, inspections and the state bodies that regulated important sectors of the economy. During his years at the Environment Ministry, Agasi developed ties with former Socialist Party MP Alqi Bllako, who served as secretary general from 2013 to 2016.
In July 2016, while Agasi was still chief inspector, he founded EA Logistics with Edmond Bllako, Alqi Bllako’s father, each holding a 50% stake. After leaving public administration, Agasi became the company’s administrator and, in July 2018, bought Edmond Bllako’s 50% stake, becoming its sole owner.
Close to power
Businessman Orest Sota recalls that he began seeing Ergys Agasi regularly at the “Chocolattini” café in Tirana’s former Blloku district in late 2021 or early 2022. Agasi ate breakfast there, while Sota went for coffee. At first they merely greeted each other, but their relationship grew closer over time. Sota later told SPAK he had heard that Agasi was becoming very powerful in the market, as a “businessman with powerful political connections.”
The growth of his businesses appears to have stemmed from this reputation in the market. After becoming the sole owner of EA Logistics, Agasi renamed it EA Tobacco in March 2019. Its turnover rose from about 6.2 million lek in 2017 to 291.5 million lek in 2021 and 470.5 million lek a year later.
Expansion in the sector continued through Special Tobacco, a company established in 2018. EA Tobacco took full control of it, and on February 28, 2020, its shares were transferred directly to Agasi.
The company traded cigarettes and tobacco products and later changed its name to EA Logistic. Growth there was rapid too. Annual turnover reached about 371 million lek in 2021 and 559 million lek in 2022.
In March 2023, Agasi also entered the information technology sector by founding EA Solution, of which he was the sole owner and initially the administrator. Its stated activities included information technology services, telecommunications and IT systems.
In its first year of operation alone, EA Solution reported turnover of about 242.4 million lek and pretax profit of about 232.1 million lek. This company would later become one of the main focuses of SPAK’s investigation into AKSHI tenders.
Ahmetaj’s allegations
For years, Ergys Agasi had remained relatively little known to the public, even as his businesses and wealth expanded. That changed in 2024, when former deputy prime minister Arben Ahmetaj placed him at the center of his allegations against Edi Rama’s government in an interview for “Report” on Italian television channel RAI 3.
Ahmetaj described Agasi as a “coordinator” between the prime minister and organized crime groups, claiming the businessman acted as an intermediary between political power and criminal figures, including during elections.
“I’ll give you the coordinator’s name: Ergys Agasi,” he told journalist Sigfriddo Ranucci, claiming that the Durrës businessman had become “the coordinator of all the groups on Rama’s behalf.”
In later statements, Ahmetaj claimed the relationship between Rama and Agasi was much closer than it appeared publicly.
According to him, Agasi attended the prime minister’s private lunches and dinners and had direct access to his inner circle. Ahmetaj has also claimed that Agasi attended a dinner at the government residence with former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
Rama himself has not denied knowing Agasi or being personally close to him. After the businessman’s arrest, the prime minister described it as a “personal relationship” but insisted that Agasi had no mandate or authorization to act on his behalf.
“People have made a great deal of my close relationships, or spun a great many stories about them. Someone being close to me is not a public office. Nor is a photograph, a personal relationship, or someone claiming, ‘I have a relationship with him, I speak on his behalf,’ and so on. I have never authorized anyone to speak on my behalf or conduct state business on my behalf,” he said on September 11, 2026, on the “Flasim” podcast.
“Of course I regret finding myself in a situation where someone with whom I had a personal relationship, for one reason or another, is exposed as having problems with the law. But at the same time, I feel entirely at ease because, beyond that regret, each person faces the law with their own lawyer,” he added.
Cigarette smuggling
In early 2025, Agasi expanded his interests in the tobacco industry by acquiring “Albania Tabak” in Librazhd. The agreement provided for full transfer of the shares to EA Tobacco once the previous owners had settled the company’s liabilities. On the face of it, this was another step in the expansion of his cigarette business.
But the factory Agasi was acquiring was already the subject of a SPAK cigarette smuggling investigation.
According to the investigation, quantities of cigarettes produced or declared for export in previous years were suspected of having been diverted to the illegal market using false documents and destinations. One of the incidents under investigation involved a shipment stopped by Greek authorities in 2023.
The main smuggling incidents investigated by SPAK dated from before Agasi took control of “Albania Tabak.” At the time, he did not own the factory and was not found to have been involved in the alleged scheme set up by its previous administrators and owners.
Nevertheless, the acquisition brought Agasi into close contact with a Special Prosecution investigation for the first time. In the summer of 2025, National Bureau of Investigation agents searched his home and businesses as part of the cigarette smuggling proceedings.
Agasi stated publicly that he was not a person under investigation in that case and knew nothing about the previous factory owners’ suspected activities. He said acquiring “Albania Tabak” had been a business decision.
The National Bureau of Investigation searches nevertheless marked a turning point in his trajectory. For the first time, Agasi’s name was associated not only with his companies, wealth and perceived closeness to those in power, but also with a SPAK criminal investigation.
AKSHI tenders
After meeting in the former Blloku district, Orest Sota and Ergys Agasi gradually grew closer, helped by their shared friendship with Alqi Bllako. According to Sota’s testimony, they eventually became close friends.
That friendship later took on a practical dimension. Agasi asked Sota to find a rental apartment for AKSHI director Mirlinda Karçanaj. Sota offered one of his properties near the “Air Albania” stadium, and Karçanaj subsequently moved in.
Sota told investigators he did not know Karçanaj and had never met her. The arrangement, he said, was made through Agasi. He also said he set the rent at a minimal level “to do Ergys Agasi a favor as a friend.”
On December 16, 2025, SPAK announced that Ergys Agasi was wanted under a pretrial detention order. He was suspected of heading a criminal group that, according to prosecutors, had manipulated AKSHI tenders by favoring certain companies and using fictitious invoices, pressure and violence.
Mirlinda Karçanaj and deputy director Hava Delibashi are suspected of influencing the tender criteria to favor “Soft & Solution,” “First,” “Fastech” and other companies indirectly linked to Agasi.
Companies awarded AKSHI tenders transferred large sums to the accounts of Agasi’s company EA Solutions through contracts and invoices for services that had not actually been provided.
SPAK alleges that Agasi used pressure and violence to restrict competition and keep market operators under control. He is suspected of ordering masked individuals to kidnap businessman Gerond Mece on August 12, 2025, to force him to withdraw appeals against AKSHI tenders that threatened the interests of companies linked to Agasi.
Agasi’s rapid rise in wealth
When he left public administration in 2017, Ergys Agasi declared assets including 106,000 euros in cash, a Mercedes-Benz, an apartment worth about 70,000 euros, a garage and his stake in EA Logistics. Nine years later, SPAK identified an extensive portfolio of properties and substantial bank accounts in his name.
Some of the properties are concentrated in the Petrela area, in the village of Qeha Shytaj, where several wooded plots measuring thousands and tens of thousands of square meters, along with large buildings, are registered in his name.
One property alone covers about 26,700 square meters and includes a 346-square-meter building, while other properties include buildings of 182, 350, 490 and 568 square meters. Some of these properties were legalized in June 2024 on the basis of applications submitted several years earlier.
Agasi’s property portfolio extended beyond Petrela. The case file identifies properties and apartments in Tirana, Durrës and Lundër, including a garage in the “Joy Residences” complex. On the coast, he is listed as the owner of a villa in the “Green Coast” complex in Palasë, bought in March 2022 for about 251,000 euros. In 2025, Agasi also bought an apartment and garage in Tirana for a total of 235,000 euros.
His growing wealth is also reflected in the expensive vehicles he used. SPAK lists a 2023 Land Rover Defender in his name, acquired in 2024 in exchange for a Range Rover he previously owned.
Besides the properties and vehicles, the investigation identified several bank accounts holding substantial sums in lek and euros. One Credins Bank account alone had a balance of about 55.6 million lek, while another at BKT held the equivalent of about 90.3 million lek.
Prosecutors allege that he gained about 10 million euros from the suspected corrupt scheme linked to AKSHI. During a search of a villa linked to Agasi at the “Equos” resort in Lundër, investigators found crates of “Romanée-Conti” wine and expensive champagne worth, according to SPAK, approximately 1 million euros.
Eight months on the run
After evading arrest in December 2025, Ergys Agasi remained at large for about eight months. But according to police sources and investigative materials reported by BIRN, he had not retreated to a remote location or gone abroad. His main base is suspected to have been a building in Shkozet, Durrës, part of a villa complex police considered a base for the group of Elvis Doçi, also known as “Visi i Pojës.”
On August 26, Agasi was kept under surveillance for about 11 hours, from Shkozet toward Elbasan and then on the return journey to Durrës. Drone surveillance was interrupted for nearly five hours near the wholesale produce market in Elbasan. He was located again that evening and arrested in Plepa.
Driving the car was Uljan Shpataraku, a former State Police official and former deputy director of Elbasan Police. He was arrested at the scene for “aiding an offender.” While on the run, Agasi is suspected of traveling between Durrës, Tirana and Elbasan and continuing to meet and communicate with people linked to organized crime and state officials. Later investigations showed that he did not live as an isolated fugitive, but moved within a relatively limited area, including places where the police had a strong operational presence.
Information about his whereabouts had circulated within the police even before his arrest. The decisive intervention, however, came only after changes in the leadership of the State Police and Ilir Proda’s departure as director during the summer of 2026.
In court, Uljan Shpataraku claimed he did not know Ergys Agasi or know he was wanted. According to his account, he was returning from Elbasan when he happened to pick up a hitchhiker who introduced himself as “Berti” and said he worked with aluminum profiles.
From the police to SHISH
Agasi’s arrest did not end the investigation into his eight months on the run. Instead, the phone, communications and materials seized after his capture opened another line of inquiry into who had helped him evade arrest and what information he had received while wanted by the authorities. That inquiry led SPAK to the head of the State Intelligence Service.
On September 21, 2026, the Special Court ordered house arrest and suspension from office for SHISH director Vlora Hyseni as part of the same criminal proceedings that began with the AKSHI tender investigation. She was placed under investigation for “aiding an offender” and “disclosure of state or official secrets.”
The suspicions center on communications between Hyseni and Agasi while he was wanted. Case materials reported in the media describe hundreds of calls, messages and exchanges through the Signal app until just days before his arrest. In some of them, Hyseni is suspected of passing Agasi information about her meetings and official activities. SPAK is investigating whether he also received information concerning police operations and his own situation as a wanted person.
Hyseni has offered a different explanation for their contact. According to reports of her testimony to SPAK, she acknowledged communicating regularly with Agasi but claimed he was a SHISH collaborator. In court, she denied giving him classified state materials.
Another element of the investigation concerns materials found after Agasi’s arrest. According to reports citing the case file, investigators seized nine pages from his vehicle containing information suspected of having been produced by SHISH. Hyseni has been questioned about their origin and has denied giving them to Agasi.
The nature and classification of these materials, and how they came into his possession, remain under investigation and have yet to be conclusively established in court.
The Special Court has imposed a measure barring publication of documents from the investigative file on Vlora Hyseni. Nevertheless, important questions remain unanswered about Ergys Agasi’s meteoric rise from environmental inspector to businessman with vast wealth and, according to SPAK, suspected leader of an organized criminal group. The information made public so far suggests his influence reached the highest levels of politics and the security institutions, further evidence of the Albanian state’s vulnerability to corruption and organized crime infiltration.
