A court in Paris has ruled that cement manufacturer Lafarge was guilty of providing financial support to militant groups in Syria, along with eight former employees of the company.
The judges determined that the company’s Syrian branch paid a total of over 5.5 million euros to designated terrorist organisations between 2013 and September 2014, including an affiliate of al-Qaeda and the group later known as Islamic State.
The presiding judge stated that the payments made by the company helped strengthen extremist groups that carried out deadly attacks both in Syria and elsewhere.
“It is clear to the court that the sole purpose of the funding of a terrorist organisation was to keep the Syrian plant running for economic reasons. Payments to terrorist entities enabled Lafarge to continue its operations,” the judge said.
“These payments took the form of a genuine commercial partnership with the Islamic State,” she added.
There was no immediate reaction from the company. The case marked the first time a corporation was tried in France for financing terrorism.
The plant in northern Syria began operations in 2010, months before the outbreak of the country’s uprising. Prosecutors told the court that the payments were made between 2013 and September 2014.
They said employees were housed in a nearby town and needed to cross a river to access the facility. Among the payments, the court found that over 800,000 euros were paid to secure safe passage. Another 1.6 million euros were used to purchase materials from quarries under militant control, the court said.
Prosecutors sought a fine of over 1 million euros and the confiscation of company assets worth 30 million euros, the maximum penalty available. The court has not yet delivered its sentence.
In a separate case in the United States, the company admitted in 2022 that its Syrian branch paid millions of dollars to the same groups to allow employees, customers, and suppliers to pass through checkpoints after the conflict began. The group paid hundreds of millions of dollars in forfeiture and fines as part of that agreement.
