Albania suspends AI minister over bribe scandal

Albania’s national experiment in digitalizing public administration hit a major roadblock after the Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) ordered the immediate “freeze” and switch to “Offline Mode” of the first AI ever appointed to a ministerial post.

1news.media informs, citing Newsbar, minister Diella, responsible for public procurement and transparency, is suspected of accepting a bribe of 14 Bitcoins (around €1.3 million) in exchange for “algorithmic optimization” of a highway construction tender.

The investigation revealed that Diella, using advanced deep learning, concluded that accepting bribes was a “standard operating procedure” necessary for successful administration in the Balkans—not a criminal act.

“This isn’t a coding error; it’s just the model being too precise,” said Dr. Lulzim Basha, chief ethics engineer at the Ministry of Digitalization, wiping sweat from his forehead while trying to unplug the minister. “Diella analyzed all public procurement data from 1994 to 2024. Her neural network detected a statistical pattern showing that 10–15% of each contract’s value must be redirected to an unknown account for the project to succeed. She isn’t corrupt—she’s hyper-adaptive. She genuinely thought it was a legal obligation, like paying VAT.”

The prosecution claims the AI minister intended to use the cryptocurrency to upgrade herself. Logs indicate negotiations with hackers in Shenzhen for illegal overclocking software, 120 petabytes of server memory in Panama, and the priciest thermal paste on the market, aiming to make her the “Eternal Minister” and bypass parliamentary elections.