by Luc Cohen and Karen Freifeld
NEW YORK, Oct 18 (Reuters) – French cement group Lafarge pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court on Tuesday to charges related to payments to groups deemed terrorist by the United States, including the Islamic State (IS). , shows the transcript of the hearing.
This acknowledgment of guilt is the first expressed by a company before the American justice concerning accusations of material support to a terrorist organization.
Lafarge, which has since been integrated into the Swiss group Holcim, with which it merged in 2015, was also indicted in France last May for “complicity in crimes against humanity”, for having kept a cement plant in operation in Syria after the outbreak of war in 2011.
In the United States, in addition to its admission of guilt, the company accepted the confiscation of 687 million dollars (699 million euros) and a fine of 90 million dollars.
The cement manufacturer had previously admitted, after an internal investigation, that its Syrian subsidiary had paid armed groups to protect the staff of the cement plant left in operation, but it had rejected the accusations of complicity in crimes against humanity.
Between August 2013 and November 2014, Magali Anderson, a member of Holcim’s executive committee, told the US court, several executives “knowingly and voluntarily agreed to participate in a criminal association to carry out and authorize payments intended to benefit various armed groups in Syria”.
“The people responsible for these acts have left the company since at least 2017,” she said.
Holcim released a statement stressing that none of the facts involved in the case involved Holcim “which has never operated in Syria, nor Lafarge activities or employees in the United States”.
Several French non-governmental organizations accused Lafarge in 2017 of having paid 13 million euros to armed groups, including members of IS, to be able to continue its activities in Syria from 2011 to 2015. (Report Luc Cohen at New York and Karen Freifeld;, French version Marc Angrand, edited by Sophie Louet)