French court convicts Lafarge of financing terrorism in Syria operations

A Paris court has put a cement giant’s wartime profits at the center of a landmark criminal conviction, finding Lafarge guilty of financing terrorism and violating international sanctions over payments made to keep its Jalabiya plant running in northeastern Syria.

The Paris Criminal Court said Lafarge paid about €5.6 million to armed groups between 2013 and 2014, including Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra-linked groups, while the company was operating under its former French identity. Former chief executive Bruno Lafont was sentenced to six years in prison and taken away by police from the courtroom as the verdict was read. The court also ordered Lafarge to pay a €1.125 million fine, with additional confiscation of assets reported at about €30 million.

The case was the first time a company had been tried in France for financing terrorism, giving the ruling significance well beyond a single corporate trial. Judges said the money helped armed groups control resources in Syria and finance terrorist acts outside the country, underscoring how commercial decisions made in a war zone can carry criminal consequences for executives and the company itself.

The prosecution began with a criminal complaint filed in November 2016 by 11 former Syrian Lafarge employees, together with Sherpa and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. Those complainants accused the company of arranging payments and purchases with Islamic State and other armed groups to keep the plant operating between 2012 and 2014. ECCHR said the judicial inquiry later found the arrangements may have totaled at least €13 million.

Other former executives and intermediaries were also convicted and received prison terms and fines. The verdict leaves Lafarge, now part of Swiss group Holcim, facing not only a criminal judgment but also the long shadow of a case that tested how far corporate responsibility reaches when business operations continue amid civil war.

Sherpa said the ruling was historic after a decade of legal battle, but added that the Syrian employees who helped bring the case still had not received compensation. That unresolved point gives the verdict a sharper edge: the court has now drawn a line around corporate conduct in conflict zones, but the people who first exposed the conduct remain without redress.