The article was prepared with the support of the OCCRP Research and Data team.

The birth of a clone

Dana Holdings first appeared on the EU sanctions list in December 2020. However, it was listed in an unusual way, alongside another company. In the EU sanctions list, the entry appeared as follows: Dana Holdings/Dana Astra. The sanctions may have appeared to be imposed on the Cypriot company Dana Holdings, which owned all the main assets of the Karić family in Belarus through other Cypriot shell firms. They were also imposed on ZTAA Dana Astra (a foreign limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus), the largest of the Belarusian firms belonging to this holding in terms of asset size in 2020. But it turned out otherwise.

For both firms, the “identifying information” column on the December 2020 EU list only showed one address and a payer reference number. These belonged to the Belarusian company ZTAA Dana Astra. [*] [*] No identifying information was provided for Dana Holdings. It could be assumed that the European External Action Service, responsible for preparing sanctions packages for EU Council votes, mistakenly conflated the names of the two firms. After all, that’s precisely how the Belarusian developer was sometimes labelled on real estate websites.

But in March 2022, the European Union seemingly corrected the mistake. The entry Dana Holdings/Dana Astra on the sanctions list was decoupled. The restrictions against Dana Holdings were entered as a separate line, now with its own taxpayer number and address, but the official date of the sanctions remained the same — December 17, 2020. In reality, the entry contained the details of another company that did not exist at the time the original sanctions against Dana Holdings were introduced.

To be more precise, the firm existed under that registration number, but it was known as TAA Torghozstroy (a limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus) and operated in the construction materials industry in the Belarusian town of Berazino. Its owner, Mikhail Kazakevich, a Belarusian national, appeared to have no links to the Karićes’ business. On February 8, 2021, a month and a half after sanctions were imposed on Dana Holdings, the Karić family’s Belarus-based company, Dana Astra, became the owner of Torghozstroy and renamed it TAA Dana Holdings (a limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus). This created a clone of its parent company in Cyprus. On March 10, 2022, the EU replaced Dana Holdings, which had initially been placed on the sanctions list, with this newly created clone. [*] [*] [*]

The Luxembourg court ruling may provide evidence that the EU initially imposed sanctions specifically against Cyprus-based Dana Holdings. In 2024, the court rejected Bogoljub Karić’s request to lift European sanctions on the grounds that he was “closely associated with Dana Holdings and its former subsidiary Dana Astra”. Dana Astra was not owned by Belarus-based TAA Dana Holdings, but by Cyprus-based Dana Holdings (through other Cypriot shell companies). 

In February 2021, about a year before the EU substituted the sanctions-list entry for Dana Holdings with the Belarus-based clone, ownership of the clone firm was transferred from Dana Astra to Croatian Dejan Laban. We found a person with the same name in a photo next to Bogoljub Karić in a Facebook post dated April 5, 2021. In the post, Karić refers to their company’s employees as one big international family, and mentions that he had visited his “cronies” in Croatia that day.

Therefore, when Dana Holdings was first included on the EU sanctions list, there was no company with this name in Belarus. Dana Holdings Limited, based in Cyprus and previously responsible for overseeing all of the Karić family’s known construction projects in Belarus, has never been subject to European restrictions. The UK has also added its Belarusian subsidiary, Dana Holdings, to its sanctions list, rather than the Cyprus-based company of the same name. 

Hiding business

In anticipation of sanctions being imposed on Dana Holdings (which were actually introduced against its Belarusian clone), its owners withdrew their Belarusian assets from the company, seemingly to cover all bases. In early December 2020, two weeks before EU restrictions were imposed, Dana Holdings sold its five Cypriot shell firms, which own construction projects in Belarus: Russelville Limited, Triworst Limited, Rodrick Limited, Elaiva Trading Limited, and Ozalco Holding Limited. They were bought by Enterprise Developments Holding, a company registered in the UAE. This firm could be a front. The owner’s name, Mostafa El-Tobgy, is almost identical to that of the man who represented Dana Holdings as CEO, Mustafa Al Tobghi. In the social media photo below, Mostafa Al-Tobgy is surrounded by members of the Karić family.

Given the successful manipulation of the EU sanctions list, it was not unreasonable to withdraw assets from Dana Holdings as a precaution. In August 2021, this Cypriot company came under US sanctions. 

USA: No more justification for sanctions against Nebojša Karić

The US Treasury imposed restrictions on Dana Holdings and its then-former owner, Nebojša Karić, as well as on three of the holding’s former Belarusian assets: ZTAA Dana Astra, TAA Emireits Blyu Skai (LLC Emirates Blue Sky), and TAA Dubai Voter Front (LLC Dubai Water Front). 

A few days ago, on August 21, 2025, the US lifted economic restrictions on Dana Holdings. The company went into liquidation on June 20, two months earlier. [*] Alex Prezanti, a British barrister and Co-Director of the State Capture Accountability Project, explained in a commentary to BIC that this could have been the reason for removing it from the sanctions list. 

“If a company no longer exists, then it’s like a natural person dying — there is no more reason to keep them listed. So yes, it would explain why they are delisted. But each case is worth considering individually”.

The day on which Dana Holdings was liquidated coincided with an official visit to Belarus by Keith Kellogg, a special envoy of US President Donald Trump. However, the BIC has no evidence that these events are related. 

At the same time, Washington lifted sanctions on Nebojša Karić, Bogolub’s son, who owned the Cyprus-based company Dana Holdings until December 2020. The original justification for the sanctions imposed on Nebojša Karić stated that the restrictions were being imposed due to his “leading role in the company”.

“If the owner/director is only listed because they are a director of a subsequently liquidated company, then again, it makes sense that a company’s liquidation takes away the grounds for that person’s designation. However, some people are designated on multiple grounds (e.g., shareholdings in multiple companies). So it depends on each listing”, Prezanti explained, offering a possible reason for the removal of the son of the Serbian businessman from the sanctions list.

The Karić “empire” in Belarus after sanctions

US sanctions continue to apply to the three Belarusian companies owned by Dana Holdings: 

Dana Astra (operating under its former name) Dubai Voter Front (formerly STAA Belinte-Roba and now TAA Arkora Development), and Emireits Blyu Skai (formerly ZTAA Zomex Investment and now TAA Library Lane (a limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus)). 

However, at least some of these companies’ actual business activities were taken over by their successor firms: TAA City View (a limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus), TAA Capital Palace (a limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus), and TAA Grand Atrium (a limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus), none of which are subject to sanctions. [*] [*] [*]

City View, the successor company to TAA Library Lane, leases retail space in the Dana Mall. [*] Capital Palace owns a trademark for a business complex with a similar name located on Kastrychnitskaya Square in Minsk. Grand Atrium has been in charge of the Dana Mall since September 2022, according to a closed corporate database that aggregates data from government agencies. 

All the above-mentioned companies are owned by the same Cypriot shell firms through which the Cypriot Dana Holdings previously controlled its assets in Belarus, and now, by the Emirati Enterprise Developments Holding, likely owned by a former employee of Dana Holdings. [*] [*] [*]

At least one of these five Cypriot companies continued to receive dividends from its subsidiaries in Belarus even after sanctions were imposed on them. According to a financial report filed with the Cyprus registry, Russelville Limited received €1.2 million in dividends in 2021. There are no financial statements in the Cyprus registry for the other Cypriot shell companies, nor for Russeville Limited after 2021. [*]

Another large Belarusian firm that continues the Karić family’s business is TAA Bir By (a limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus), a real estate agency that sells properties in the Minsk World residential complex — the largest project undertaken by Dana Holdings in Belarus. Nagip Behluli owns this agency. In 2018, Bogoljub Karić wrote about him on social media: “Nagip and I were born on the same street. He was my best friend in my youth, and we are still friends and work together today”. [*] Behluli is now the director of Library Lane in Belarus. [*] [*] [*]

The Epilogue: Power and money

Bogoljub Karić is the only remaining member of the Karić clan under European sanctions. He and his wife, Milanka, repeatedly travelled with Aleksander Lukashenko’s eldest son, Victor, and his family to Turkey and Greece — seemingly on holiday.

This may explain why Aleksandr Lukashenko has been so generous towards Serbian businesses. When justifying the 2021 US sanctions, the US Treasury Department outlined the benefits that the family had received from Lukashenko. 

“OFAC [US Office of Foreign Assets Control] is also designating a construction empire that has received numerous extraordinary benefits, including gifts of plots of state land in Minsk, through presidential decrees signed by Lukashenko. Among these are almost $800 million worth of land for a single project, generous tax breaks or the elimination of taxes altogether, the use of state resources for infrastructure work, and other preferential terms”.

BIC estimates that the Cypriot Dana Holdings received €128 million in dividends from 2013 to 2020. At the time of publication, some of Karićes’ business activities in Belarus were still being carried out by firms not subject to US and EU sanctions. These firms’ beneficiaries are friends and former employees of the Karić family. 

Update, 8 September 2025:

1. The date of the decoupling of the Dana Holdings/Dana Astra entry has been corrected: it did not take place in "March 2021", but in "March 2022".
2. The date when Dana Holdings was replaced in the sanctions list by a clone company has also been corrected: the substitution occurred on "10 March 2022", not on "27 March 2021" as previously reported.
3. The timeline between the substitution of Dana Holdings in the EU sanctions list and the transfer of ownership of the clone company to Croatian citizen Dejan Laban has been corrected: the transfer happened roughly "a year before" the substitution, not "a month before".