EU sanctions misstep shields Lukashenko-linked developers from penalties

The Karić family, renowned for their extensive construction projects in Minsk and their connections with the family of Aleksandr Lukashenko, avoided the sanctions enforced by the European Union on their construction business empire. The sanctions targeted a cloned firm registered in Minsk, instead of the Cypriot company Dana Holdings. Despite the sanctions, the Cypriot co-owner of the Karić family’s sanctioned Belarusian companies kept receiving dividends.

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.