The Croatian investigative outlet Ostro put a direct question to the Croatian State Attorney’s Office: were any criminal proceedings being conducted against Josip Heit or his companies, in Croatia or abroad? The answer it received was not a refusal to comment. The County State Attorney’s Office in Split confirmed that it had transferred the criminal file to the Municipal State Attorney’s Office in Split in order to assess whether the elements of the criminal offence of money laundering were present, and that investigative actions were ongoing. It added that proceedings during the investigation are secret.
That is a prosecutor’s office confirming a live criminal investigation into a named individual. It is a materially different thing from a regulatory warning, and it sits underneath every other development in this story.
Who Heit Is, According to the Record
Heit is 47 and was born in Split, on Croatia’s Adriatic coast. According to Ostro’s reporting he previously used the name Curcic. He is based between Dubai and Germany. He was a co-founder of Karatbars International, which collapsed in 2019, and went on to build GSB Group, through which GSPartners was launched. GSPartners claimed by its own account to have raised around a billion dollars from more than 800,000 investors before collapsing in December 2023 under coordinated enforcement action across the United States and Canada. He is now associated with the Apertum Foundation and its DAO1 and APTM DAO products.
Various publications describe Heit as having a prior fraud conviction in Luxembourg. That account originates in Croatian press reporting and this publication has not been able to obtain the underlying court record. It is recorded here as reported rather than as established fact.
What the Investigation Appears to Concern
Ostro’s reporting sets out the asset trail that has drawn attention. Heit’s name appears in Dubai Uncovered, the property data leak examined by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. According to that data he owns or has owned several apartments and office spaces in Dubai purchased for more than 21 million euros, acquired around two years ago, some of which have since been sold. In Kastela, near Split, he bought land and an old building in 2019 for more than 940,000 euros, and his name is linked to other local companies holding real estate.
One transaction reported by Ostro is unusual on its face. GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation bought shares in a company called White Rock Minerals, now Kameni Trogir, from Sasa Svalina for 9.5 million euros. Three years later the former Croatian footballer Milan Rapaic bought the same company for the same amount.
Football Clubs and a Sponsorship Nobody Will Explain
Apertum has also become visible in Croatian sport. It sponsors NK Hrvace, a local football club, and its logo appears on the jersey of the top-flight side HNK Vukovar 1991. Ostro spoke to Anamarija Doljanin, the daughter of the Hrvace club president and a volunteer there, who said she had come across Apertum while sending sponsorship requests to companies that sponsored other clubs. She said Apertum responded positively, but she declined to say through whom the contact had been made. HNK Vukovar 1991 did not respond to Ostro’s inquiry about how its partnership came about.
Why This Matters Now
The Croatian investigation runs alongside everything else currently outstanding. Heit settled with American and Canadian securities regulators in September 2024 on terms carrying no financial penalty and no admission, under which the settling states withdrew their fraud allegations against him in exchange for refunds to investors across 34 US states and six Canadian provinces. Those claims closed in May 2025 and, as we reported, none had been determined as of September 2026. In the same period, six regulators in five countries issued warnings about DAO1, the most recent from South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority on September 7, 2026.
A securities regulator can bar a person from selling investments and require them to return money. A criminal money laundering investigation asks a different question, about where money went after it was raised. The Split prosecutors have not said what they have found, and are not obliged to. What they have confirmed is that they are looking.
Why a Criminal File Is Different From a Regulatory One
A securities regulator asks whether an investment was sold lawfully. It can bar a person from the industry, order restitution and impose penalties. A money laundering investigation asks a different question entirely, and one that regulators are not equipped to answer: what happened to the money after it was raised, and did moving it involve concealing its origin.
That distinction explains why the Split file matters more than the warnings stacked behind it. Heit settled with North American regulators in September 2024 on terms carrying no financial penalty and no admission of wrongdoing, and the settling states withdrew their fraud allegations against him. The settlement announced by NASAA resolved the securities question in those jurisdictions. It said nothing about where the money went, and it had no effect outside North America.
Croatian prosecutors are not bound by any of it. A criminal money laundering assessment proceeds independently of whether a securities regulator elsewhere agreed to stand down.
The Assets Sitting Alongside the Investigation
Ostro’s reporting traces a property position across three countries. Heit’s name appears in the Dubai Uncovered data leak examined by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which places several apartments and office spaces in his name purchased for more than 21 million euros, acquired around two years before the reporting, with some already sold. In Kastela near Split he bought land and an old building in 2019 for more than 940,000 euros.
One transaction stands out on its face. GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation bought shares in White Rock Minerals, since renamed Kameni Trogir, from Sasa Svalina for 9.5 million euros. Three years later the former Croatian international footballer Milan Rapaic bought the same company for exactly the same amount. A company changing hands twice at an identical price three years apart is the kind of transaction an anti money laundering assessment exists to examine.
Separately, GSB Gold Standard Banking Corporation AG, identified by Texas authorities as part of the GSB Group, lent 4 million euros to a woman married to Alexandru Nicolae Bodi, a Romanian businessman under investigation by Romanian prosecutors since 2020 in connection with organised crime and human trafficking. Bodi has not been charged in connection with any Heit venture and reporting describes his role in the DAO1 and Apertum business as unclear.
Conclusion
Croatian prosecutors in Split have confirmed that a criminal file concerning Josip Heit has been passed to the municipal prosecutor to assess the offence of money laundering, and that investigative actions are ongoing. Reporting by Ostro has traced more than 21 million euros of Dubai property in his name from a leaked dataset, a 940,000 euro purchase near Split, a 9.5 million euro share transaction that was resold three years later at exactly the same price, and sponsorship deals with two Croatian football clubs that nobody involved will fully explain. The proceedings are secret. The investigation is real.
