Convicted fraudster Josip Heit is under investigation in Croatia for money laundering.

As reported by Ostro on October 24th, 2025;

Oštro sent a query to the State Attorney’s Office asking whether any proceedings are being conducted against Josip Heit and his companies abroad and in Croatia.

The County State Attorney’s Office in Split explained that they had transferred the criminal file to the Municipal State Attorney’s Office in Split to verify the existence of the criminal offense of money laundering and that investigations were being conducted.

They also added that the proceedings during the investigation were secret.

Dating back to Heit’s involvement in Karatbars International, and then ownership and operation of GSPartners, DAO1 and Apertum Foundation, Ostro provided insight into potential money laundering channels;

The German company GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation AG, identified by Texas authorities as part of the GS Group, operated in Croatia and is also linked to Heit’s intermediary in Romania, Alexandru Nicolae Bodi. The company lent four million euros to a woman who was married to Bodi.

In a Romanian human trafficking investigation, a witness mentions Ovidia Cocos, a relative of the Romanian president of the Supreme Court. Cocos, along with Bodi, is also Heit’s intermediary in Romania, where the duo helps him acquire and manage real estate.

An October 21st report from Public Record, a Romanian publication, provides details on Heit’s movement of money in Romania;

In 2018, he bought a former evangelical school in the village of Seleuș, Mureș County. According to a source in the area, the building is in an advanced state of decay and the taxes have not been paid.

The following year, he paid over a million euros for a penthouse and two parking spaces. The apartment is on the 25th floor of an Asmita Gardens building, a residential complex on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, on the edge of Bucharest’s Văcărești Natural Park.

Also in 2019, Heit paid another 2.2 million euros for a two-story villa on Londra Street in Bucharest, in an embassy district. He then set about renovating it.

Ion Mihai Macaveiu – site supervisor, on behalf of the owner, also participated in the reception of the renovation works in 2020. Macaveiu was the leader of the PSD Mediaș, local councilor and state secretary in the Ministry of Economy.

Over the phone, Macaveiu confirmed that he was involved in the renovation of the building. He told us that he knows Alex Bodi from Mediaș and that he was a classmate of Ovidiu Cocoș, with whom he remained friends. “I never met Josip Heit ,” he added.

In 2022, Heit exchanged the villa for an apartment valued at 282,000 euros and received another 1.35 million euros.

A real estate agency that brokered the exchange contract requested its annulment in court, because “the price was fraudulently reduced in order to evade taxes and duties owed to the state (…) the declared value of the properties is much lower than the real value . ” It then dropped the lawsuit because the legal fees were too high.

Also in 2022, Heit sold the apartment he received in exchange and received 1.08 million euros for it.

The Bucharest transactions are linked to two other key figures: Alex Bodi and Ovidiu Cocoș. Both represented Josip Heit in real estate transactions in Bucharest through notarial powers of attorney, and the latter even received money from one of them.

Ostro’s report covers Heit’s movement of money in Croatia;

Heit’s partner in Croatia is his brother-in-law Saša Svalina. Both of them have several companies in Croatia that are mostly loss-making, with the exception of Svalina’s company Starac, which is engaged in the exploitation and processing of quarry aggregates.

Svalina also has a company in the US, S&G Brothers Inc, which trades gold, silver and diamonds, according to her website.

From 2014 to 2019, Svalina and Heit, according to documents from the Commercial Court in Split, transferred 19.5 million euros between different jurisdictions by selling shares in Croatian companies to their companies in Florida and Germany.

From 2014 to 2020, GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation acquired shares in Croatian companies owned by Josip Heit and Saša Svalina, which had neither profit nor assets at the time of purchase.

For example, Heit’s German company GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation now owns the Croatian companies White Rock and No name, which were previously directly owned by Heit. His German company bought them for six million euros. It also gave the former a loan of 1.4 million euros, which was converted into share capital.

GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation also bought shares in White Rock minerals (now Kameni Trogir) from Saša Svalina for 9.5 million euros. Three years later, Milan Rapaić, a former Croatian footballer, bought White Rock minerals (now Kameni Trogir) for the same amount.

Funds misappropriated through DAO1 and Apertum Foundation may also be being laundered through Nogometni klub Hrvace (NK Hrvace), a Croatian Football Club;

The club president’s daughter and volunteer Anamarija Doljanin told Oštro in a phone interview that she came across Apertum by sending requests to various potential sponsors.

She looked for them among the sponsors of other clubs, so she sent the request to Apertum. Doljanin said that Apertum responded positively, but she did not want to reveal who she came across them through.

The Apertum logo is also on the jersey of one first league team – HNK Vukovar 1991, which did not respond to Oštro’s inquiry about how the cooperation came about.

And Public Report, citing research from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), details Heit’s fund in Dubai;

Heit’s name appears in Dubai Uncovered, a data leak that revealed real estate owners.

According to the data, Heit personally owns or has owned several apartments and office spaces, purchased for more than 21 million euros.

They were purchased two years ago, and some have already been sold, according to information obtained by OCCRP.

From Ostro;

During 2023, Josip Heit purchased at least two apartments in Dubai with a total value of 11.3 million euros.

One of the apartments was sold in February this year for 5.7 million euros.

Ostro reached out to Heit and Svalina (right) for comment on their research, neither replied.

Heit’s lawyer promised to send a response, but did not respond after that.

A 2020 report from SpyNews cites Ovidiu Cocoș as Alex Bodi’s boss in Romanian organized crime hierarchy;

With the arrest of the mafia bosses who tortured and drugged women to make money in brothels in Germany, a dream was shattered: Alex Bodi can no longer honor the contract with his boss, Ovidiu Cocoș, from Mediaș, who offered him a piece of bread, hiring him as a manager at his small company with a single employee.

The same Ovidiu Cocoș has been involved in real estate projects in recent years and, although he is Bodi’s boss, with proper documents, from time to time he borrowed from him.

Public Record reached out to Cocoș (right) for comment on Heit’s Croatian money laundering case;

Ovidija Cocosa .. promised to send a response, but had not done so by the time the article was published.

Public Record contacted Alex Bodi, who claimed he was being “harassed” and threatened to sue for defamation.

Pending further updates on Croatia’s investigation into Heit and his associates, things aren’t going so well at DAO1 and Apertum Foundation.

Heit hasn’t made any public appearances since German authorities issued a DAO1 and Apertum Foundation fraud warning on October 2nd.

Meanwhile the public trading value of APTM, the token used to defraud consumers through DAO1, has slid from $1.89 in August to 72 cents as of October 25th.

Daily trading volume, used to pump APTM’s value against DAO1 insider and investor withdrawals, has dropped from ~$8.55 million to ~$1.25 million over the same period.

This is similar to what happened with G999, the token of DAO1’s predecessor GSPartners, in 2024.