A picture shows the logo on a plant of French cement company Lafarge on April 7, 2014 in Paris. (AFP)
A Paris court on April 13 ruled that cement conglomerate Lafarge was guilty of paying protection money to the ISIL terrorist organization and other jihadists to maintain its business in war-torn Syria.
The ruling follows a 2022 case in the United States in which the French firm pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to U.S.-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 euros ($6.5 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 ISIL, 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," said the presiding judge, Isabelle Prevost-Desprez.
The company established a "genuine commercial partnership with ISIL,” she added, noting the amount paid to jihadist organizations, which was "never disclosed,” contributed to the "extreme gravity of the offences.”
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.
ISIL 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.
