A French court Monday, April 13, handed a six-year prison term to the former head of cement conglomerate Lafarge over paying jihadists to maintain business operations in war-torn Syria in 2013 and 2014. A judge ordered Bruno Lafont to start serving immediately. Former deputy managing director Christian Herrault received a five-year sentence.
Lafarge itself, now owned by the Swiss conglomerate Holcim, was fined €1.125 million.
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” organizations and agreed to pay a $778-million fine, in what was the first time a corporation had faced the charge.
The Paris court found Lafarge – which has since been acquired by Swiss conglomerate Holcim – paid nearly €5.6 million in 2013 and 2014, via its subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS), to jihadist groups and intermediaries to keep its plant operating in northern Syria.
“This method of financing terrorist organizations, and primarily IS, was essential in enabling the terrorist organization to gain control of Syria’s natural resources, allowing it to finance terrorist acts within the region and those planned abroad, particularly in Europe,” said the presiding judge, Isabelle Prevost-Desprez. The company established a “genuine commercial partnership with IS,” she added, noting the amount paid to jihadist organizations – which was “never disclosed” – contributed to the “extreme gravity of the offenses.”
Lafarge had finished building a €680-million 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 jihadists seized large swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014, declaring a so-called cross-border “caliphate” and implementing their brutal interpretation of Islamic law.
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 jihadists seized control of the factory. In 2013 and 2014, LCS paid intermediaries to access raw materials from the Islamic State organization and other groups and to allow free movement for the company’s trucks and employees. It paid jihadists including the Islamic State group and Syria’s then Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.
‘Single aim: profit’
The defendants included the company, five former members of operational and security staff, and two Syrian intermediaries. The court found all eight former employees guilty of financing “terrorist” organizations and issued sentences ranging from 18 months to seven years behind bars.
Firas Tlass, a Syrian ex-member of staff who made the payments to the jihadist groups, was sentenced in absentia to seven years in jail. Former deputy managing director Christian Herrault was handed five years. Herrault had argued that the decision to keep the factory open was made out of concern for local staff. “We could have washed our hands of it and walked away, but what would have happened to the factory’s employees?” he said.
Prosecutors said 69-year-old Lafont “gave clear instructions” to keep the plant operating, a decision they called “staggering in its cynicism.” The French national counterterrorism prosecutor’s office (PNAT) said in its closing argument in December that Lafarge was guilty of funding “terrorist” organizations with “a single aim: profit.” Holcim, which took over Lafarge in 2015, has said it had no knowledge of the Syria dealings.
A second case, concerning allegations of complicity in crimes against humanity, is ongoing.