French cement firm Lafarge admits of supporting IS to remain open in Syria
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Alaina
- . October 19, 2022
- . Update: November 11, 2022 1:00 am
The French cement company Lafarge, on Tuesday, has pleaded guilty to paying millions of dollars (roughly $6 million) to the Islamic State group in exchange for its permission to keep the plant in Syria operational. in a case the US justice department called the first of its kind.
In the trial the prosecutors have accused Lafarge of turning a blind eye to the conduct of the militant group in Syria, making payments in form of bribe to it in 2013 and 2014 as the IS group occupied a broad area of Syria.
The company’s actions have occurred before its merger with a Swiss company Holcim, to become the world’s largest cement making business. The payments were made to ensure that operations of the $680n million Syrian plant continued, that prosecutors say was constructed by Lafarge in 2011 at the start of the Syrian civil war. The money was to be used to protect employees and to keep a competitive edge, The Guardian notes.
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“The defendants routed nearly $6m in illicit payments to two of the world’s most notorious terrorist organisations – Isis and al-Nusrah Front in Syria – at a time those groups were brutalising innocent civilians in Syria and actively plotting to harm Americans,” the assistant attorney general, Matthew Olsen, the justice department’s top national security official, said in a statement. “There is simply no justification for a multinational corporation authorizing payments to designated terrorist organisations.”
Lafarge chairman Magali Anderson said in court that during period from August 2013 until November 2014, former executives at the company’s Syrian plant had “knowingly and wilfully agreed to participate in a conspiracy to make and authorise payments intended for the benefit of various armed groups in Syria”.
In a statement, Holcim said “none of the conduct involved Lafarge operations or employees in the United States and none of the executives who were involved in the conduct are with Lafarge or any affiliated entities today”.
