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

A French court has fined the cement group Lafarge more than €1m (£870,000) and sentenced its former boss to six years in prison for paying protection money to Islamic State and other terror groups to maintain its business in war-torn Syria from 2013 to 2014.

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 the brutal repression of anti-government protests by the then president, Bashar al-Assad.

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.