French cement company to face trial for financing ISIS

French cement-maker Lafarge will face trial in Paris on charges that it financed terrorism and breached international sanctions, investigating judges said Wednesday.

Lafarge, which was purchased in 2015 by the Swiss group Holcim, is suspected of paying $5 million to Islamic State (ISIS) and other jihadist groups to keep its plant in Syria operating in 2013 and 2014. The payments were made through its Syrian subsidiary in the middle of that country’s civil war, even as ISIS was kidnapping and killing Westerners.

Lafarge told POLITICO in a statement that it acknowledged the decision of the investigating judges.

Along with the group, eight people including the company’s former CEO, managers and Syrian intermediaries will be tried at the end of 2025.

In a separate investigation, the company pled guilty to these charges in a U.S. court in 2022, and agreed to pay $778 million as part of a plea agreement.

Lafarge is also facing separate charges in Paris of complicity in crimes against humanity for holding on to its factory in Syria after conflict broke out in 2011, on the grounds of paying terrorist groups while being aware of the crimes they commit. An investigation into those offences is still ongoing.

Anti-corruption group Sherpa and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the plaintiffs in the case, welcomed Wednesday’s decision, but noted that it should not overshadow the “critical aspect of the case,” referring to the charges of complicity in crimes against humanity.

“While today’s decision closes part of the judicial investigation, this case extends beyond the financing of terrorism. Lafarge is the first company in the world to have been charged with complicity in crimes against humanity … Acts of complicity cannot therefore go unpunished,” Sherpa said in a press release.

France’s highest court in January rejected a request from Lafarge to drop the charges of complicity in crimes against humanity.