French cement maker convicted of financing terror groups to keep its Syria plant working

French cement maker convicted of financing terror groups to keep its Syria plant working

The ruling follows a 2022 case in the United States in which the French firm pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to US-designated “terrorist” organisations and agreed to pay a $778m fine (£580m) – the first time a company had faced the charge.

The Paris court found that Lafarge, which is now part of the Swiss conglomerate Holcim, paid nearly €5.6m via its subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS) to terror groups and intermediaries to keep its plant operating in northern Syria.

The company’s former chief executive, Bruno Lafont, was sentenced to six years in prison for financing terrorism, which a judge ordered him to start serving immediately. Lafont’s lawyer said he would appeal.

The presiding judge, Isabelle Prevost-Desprez, said: “This method of financing terrorist organisations, and primarily IS, was essential in enabling the terrorist organisation to gain control of Syria’s natural resources, allowing it to finance terrorist acts within the region and those planned abroad, particularly in Europe.”

Lafarge established a “genuine commercial partnership with IS”, she said, which added to the “extreme gravity of the offences”.

Lafarge had finished building a $680m factory in Jalabiya in 2010, just before Syria’s civil war erupted in March the following year amid opposition to then-president Bashar al-Assad’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.

IS seized large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, implementing a brutal control of local areas.

While other multinational companies left Syria in 2012, Lafarge evacuated only its expatriate employees and left its Syrian staff in place until September 2014, when IS seized control of the factory.

In 2013 and 2014, LCS paid intermediaries to access raw materials from the Islamic State organisation and other groups and to allow free movement for the company’s trucks and employees. It paid groups including Islamic State and Syria’s then al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

Sherpa and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, who filed a complaint in the case alongside former Syrian employees of Lafarge, said the ruling marked “a major turning point in the fight for corporate accountability”. But they said the Syrian employees were still waiting for compensation.

Former Syrian Lafarge employees had told the court how their daily lives were marked by fear of dismissal, bombings, kidnappings, crossing areas under sniper fire, having to pass through checkpoints and the constant risk of reprisals from armed groups.

Former employees said in a statement after the verdict: “Lafarge was aware of what was happening to us – the checkpoints, the threats, the daily fear – but chose to risk the lives of its employees for profit.” The former employees said they would would continue to ask for compensation.

Holcim, which took over Lafarge in 2015, has said it had no knowledge of the Syria dealings.

The French national counter-terrorism prosecutor’s office had said in closing statements that Lafarge was guilty of financing “terrorist” organisations with “a single aim: profit”.

Lafarge is also under investigation in France for alleged complicity in crimes against humanity.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report