The article was prepared with the support of the OCCRP Research and Data team.
The Karić family, known for their large-scale construction projects in Minsk and their ties with the family of Aleksandr Lukashenko, escaped the sanctions imposed by the European Union on their construction business empire. The restrictions were imposed on a clone firm with registration in Minsk, rather than on the Cypriot company Dana Holdings. Even after the imposition of sanctions, the Cypriot co-owner of the Karić family’s sanctioned Belarusian companies continued to receive dividends.
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.
The Karićes and Dana Holdings
The following is an excerpt from the justification for EU sanctions against Bogoljub Karić:
“Bogoljub Karić is a Serbian businessman and politician. Together with his family members, he developed a network of real estate companies in Belarus and has cultivated a network of contacts with the family of [President Lukashenko]. In particular, he has been closely associated with Dana Holdings and its former subsidiary Dana Astra, and he reportedly represented those entities during meetings with [President Lukashenko]. The Minsk World project, which was developed by a company associated with Karić, was described by [President Lukashenko] as ‘an example of cooperation of the Slavonic world’. Thanks to those close relationships with [President Lukashenko] and his entourage, companies associated with Karić received preferential treatment from the [regime of President Lukashenko], including tax breaks and plots of land for real estate development”.
Dana Holdings Limited was established in Cyprus in 2013 and has implemented large-scale construction projects in Minsk through its subsidiaries in Belarus.
During the appeal against the EU sanctions in the Luxembourg court in November 2024, it was revealed that the family of Bogoljub Karić controls Dana Holdings, with his son being the company’s beneficiary. The 2018 and 2019 Cyprus registry statements list Nebojša Karić, son of Bogoljub Karić, as the owner of the company. [*]
The court in Luxembourg has noted that the statement made by Bogoljub Karić’s son on May 9, 2023 demonstrates that he remains a beneficiary of the company.
Before the sanctions were imposed, there were three well-known companies belonging to Dana Holdings in Belarus. Dana Astra was the customer for the largest construction project of the 21st century in Minsk: the Minsk World. The two largest contractors for Dana Astra were the Belarusian firms ZTAA Zomex Investment (a foreign limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus) and STAA Belinte-Roba (a joint limited liability company as defined by the law of Belarus). Dana Holdings owned the three companies via five Cypriot shell firms: Russeville Limited, Triworst Limited, Rodrick Limited, Elaiva Trading Limited, and Ozalco Holding Limited.
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 2021, 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 27, 2021, 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 month 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. [*]
Russville Limited is the co-owner of all three of the Karić family’s leading Belarus-based companies that US sanctions have hit: Dana Astra, Arkora Development, and Library Lane.
In 2022, following the imposition of American and European sanctions on Dana Holdings and its subsidiaries, Russeville Limited established another Belarus-based firm: TAA Capital Palace. It became one of the successors to the sanctioned TAA Arkora Development.
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.