Lafarge is suspected of having paid several million euros to jihadist groups, including the Islamic State organization, as well as to intermediaries, in order to maintain the activity of a cement factory in Syria.
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The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) has requested a first trial against the French cement manufacturer Lafarge for “financing of terrorism” And “non-compliance with international financial sanctions”but also against former leaders for “financing of terrorism”, Radio France learned from a judicial source on Friday February 9.
Required referrals “are based on direct and conscientious participation in financial operations that have benefited terrorist entities”, specifies this source. In total, the Pnat requested, on Friday, the referral of nine individuals to the criminal court “for financing terrorism”for acts committed between 2012 and 2014. Four of them are also being prosecuted for “non-compliance with international financial sanctions”.
Among these nine people, we find: four directors or executives of the Lafarge group or its companies, three directors or executives of the branch “safety” of the group or its companies, and two Syrian intermediaries. The Pnat adds that the investigation continues concerning the facts of “complicity in crimes against humanity”just like the other facts “denounced in the complaint in relation to working conditions”.
The group, now a subsidiary of Holcim, is suspected of having paid, via its Syrian subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS), several million euros to jihadist groups, including the Islamic State (IS) organization, as well as to intermediaries, in order to maintain the activity of a cement factory in Jalabiya, even as the country plunged into war.
