Europe 1 with AFP
modified to
9:24 p.m., October 18, 2022
The Lafarge company announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to pay a financial penalty of 778 million dollars to the United States, after having helped “terrorist” organizations in Syria, including the Islamic State, between 2013 and 2014. French cement manufacturer also confessed to “deeply regret” these acts.
Lafarge, now under the leadership of the Swiss group Holcim, announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to pay a financial penalty of 778 million dollars to the United States and to plead guilty to having helped “terrorist” organizations in Syria, including the Islamic State group. , between 2013 and 2014. The French cement group “accepted responsibility for the actions of the individual managers involved, whose behavior was in flagrant violation of codes of conduct”, Lafarge said in a statement, adding “deeply regret” these acts.
Control procedures
Lafarge points out that the United States Department of Justice acknowledged that the group had put in place appropriate control procedures to henceforth detect, and avoid, any conduct of this nature and therefore considered that it was “not necessary”. to appoint an independent monitor.
The group also stresses that it continues to cooperate fully with the investigation by the French authorities on the same subject, but also says it is ready to “defend itself against any legal action that it considers unjustified”. The company is charged in France for “complicity in crimes against humanity” concerning its activities in Syria.
Several million euros to the Islamic State
It is suspected of having paid in 2013 and 2014, through its Syrian subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS), several million euros to terrorist groups, including the Islamic State (IS) group, as well as to intermediaries, in order to to maintain the activity of a cement factory in Syria in Jalabiya while the country was sinking into the war. The investigation by the French authorities estimated that these payments could have reached between 4.8 and 10 million euros for the EI group alone.
Lafarge is also suspected of selling cement from the factory to IS and paying intermediaries to source raw materials from jihadist factions. The shares of Holcim, the parent company of Lafarge, were temporarily suspended from the Swiss stock exchange on Tuesday after the publication of the first information on the agreement with the American ministry of Justice.