Around a month ago, on October 18th 2022 the French géant of cement Lafarge stood on trial, accused by the United States for “conspiring to provide materials support to foreign terrorist organisations.” Another trial is awaiting by the French State, this one is raising the level of conviction to a much more severe one, indicting the company for “complicity of crime against humanity.” Although the character of helping a terrorist organisation is obvious enough, one can still wonder to which extent did Lafarge actually fund the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)? This article will also explore the sentence mechanism and the different type of accusations against the company from both the US and France, and more notably their ethical relevance.
First of all, some facts are needed for one to be understanding the extent of involvement of Lafarge in funding ISIS. According to the American Department of Justice both Lafarge S.A. (based in Paris) and Lafarge Cement Syria (their Syrian division based in Damascus) were implicated in funding terrorism in Syria. The scheme wasn’t beneficial only to ISIS but also to the al-Nusrah Front (ANF). As reported by court documents they paid both ISIS and ANF for a permission to continue operating their cement plant in Jalabiya, Syria between 2013 and 2014. Per these court documents, these transactions to the terrorist groups enabled Lafarge Cement Syria to secure a revenue of more than $70 million.
Details of the transactions were also disclosed during the trial and executives confessed having made arrangements with the two terrorist organizations by adopting a system of “taxes.” The latters - approximately amounting to $5.92 million - were apparently paid to ensure the protection of Lafarge Cement Syria’s staff at the plant. Moreover, it was proven that attempts to hide the transactions were made internally such as demanding ISIS not to mention the name of Lafarge on official documents and agreements, while using personal email addresses instead of their corporate ones.
What appears striking is that the official termination of activities between Lafarge Cement Syria and the terrorist groups is known as 18th August 2014, right after the UNSC issued a resolution on member states to prohibit doing any business with ISIS as well as the following: “a prohibition on providing or collecting funds with the intention that the funds be used, or in the knowledge that the funds are to be used, by a designated person.” To this matter, it appears quite anecdotic that the Lafarge group decided to halt their activities exactly at the same time. Indeed, one can wonder if this does emphasize the real criminal nature of their actions because it’s just been prohibited by the United Nations? Would the company have stopped its activities without an UN Resolution?
All in all, the actions of Lafarge can be summarised in the following concrete statement: Lafarge paid millions of dollars to ISIS and to ANF, which the same millions have definitely been used for terrorist purpose. The latter include funding to recruit new members, to train them, to undertake war against governments (counting the United States and France), and especially funding to conduct large scale terrorist attacks worldwide, including the multiple Paris attacks in 2015.
Nonetheless, one has to remind that the US trial positively resulted in a fine of more than $700 million, which can undeniably be seen as a game changer. Although this trial marked the first time a company had pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism, some companies have been fined more in the past and not for a conviction as strong as funding of terrorism. This therefore leads us to a moral questioning of whether or not the fining system of justice is still reliable when it comes to the funding of terrorism. Counter Financial Crime engages in raising awareness of what we consider an unethical judgment over a crime that is not only a violation of companies’ conduct, but a much greater issue. We strongly believe that such actions must be punished by prison sentences or the halting of the company’s activities. Finally, this leads us to have faith in the French trial which has gone stronger against Lafarge S.A. and Lafarge Cement Syria by accusing them of “complicity of crime against humanity.”
Sarah Rogers
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