A court in Paris , yesterday, found Lafarge, now part of Holcim, guilty of charges that its Syrian subsidiary financed terrorism and breached EU sanctions to keep a cement plant operating in northern Syria during the country’s civil war.
Global Cement.com reported that the case was the first time a company has been tried for – and found guilty of – financing terrorism in France.
According to the reports, ECCHR and Sherpa, the two organisations that filed the initial lawsuit, called it “A historic decision in the fight against multinational corporations’ impunity.
”A total of eight former Lafarge employees were found guilty. They include its former CEO Bruno Lafont, who has been sentenced to six years in jail. “
His lawyer said that he would appeal, as did the lawyer for Christian Herrault, Lafarge’s former deputy managing director, who was sentenced to five years.
Firas Tlass, a Syrian ex-member Syrian ex-member of staff who made the payments to the jihadist groups, was sentenced to seven years in jail in absentia. It was not immediately clear whether Tlass and the other former employees found guilty would also appeal.
Judges determined that Lafarge in total paid €5.59 million to extremist groups, including ISIS and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, both designated as terrorists by the European Union, between 2013 and September 2014.
Isabelle Prevost-Desprez, the Presiding Judge, said that the payments made by Lafarge helped to strengthen extremist groups that carried out deadly attacks in Syria and beyond.
“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,” Prevost-Desprez said.
Prevost-Desprez said. “These payments took the form of a genuine commercial partnership with the ISIS.”
Lafarge has been ordered to pay a €1.125 million fine, the maximum penalty available for a company, as prosecutors had requested. “
Lafarge SA acknowledges the court’s finding, which concerns a legacy matter involving conduct that occurred more than a decade ago and was in flagrant violation of Lafarge’s Code of Conduct,” the company said in a statement.
“The decision is an important milestone in Lafarge SA’s actions to address this legacy matter responsibly and the company is reviewing the court’s reasoning.” Holcim did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
