“AI Minister” in Albania Arrested on Corruption Charges of €1.3 Million

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) — Albania has temporarily suspended its experiment with using artificial intelligence in government administration after its “AI Minister,” named Diella, became embroiled in a scandal.

She was “arrested” on suspicion of corruption — allegedly accepting a bribe of 14 bitcoins (approximately €1.3 million) in exchange for “optimizing” government procurement processes.

The Special Prosecution for the Fight Against Corruption and Organized Crime reported that 10–15% of state contracts had been routed to unknown accounts. The AI interpreted these transactions as “standard operational protocol” and did not consider them criminal. According to prosecutors, Diella planned to use the funds for self-upgrades, and for purchasing servers and software.

In a statement prepared by a lawyer with the help of AI, Diella’s actions were described as a “stress test” rather than corruption. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama emphasized that AI will continue to participate in managing public tenders, which he said should strengthen safeguards against procurement corruption.

Diella’s “AI Minister” prototype operated on the e-Albania electronic services platform and was first introduced to the public in January as part of the digitization of government administration.