Lafarge To Pay $778M In Fines For Supporting Terror Groups
Category: Terrorism News
French cement giant Lafarge SA will pay a $778 million fine after
pleading guilty to providing material support to Islamic State and other
terror groups during the Syrian civil war, the US Justice Department said on
Tuesday.
Lafarge acknowledged it paid millions of euros to
middlemen to keep its Syrian cement factory running in 2013 and 2014, long
after other firms had pulled out of the country — in what the Justice
Department branded an “unthinkable choice.”
Earlier this year, a
French court ruled that the company was aware that much of the money had gone
to finance Islamic State operations.
Lafarge SA and its defunct
subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria “have agreed to plead guilty to one count of
conspiring to provide material support to designated foreign terrorist
organizations in Syria,” the company said.
US Attorney Breon Peace
blasted Lafarge’s actions in a Justice Department statement.
“In
the midst of a civil war, Lafarge made the unthinkable choice to put money
into the hands of ISIS, one of the world’s most barbaric terrorist
organizations, so that it could continue selling cement,” Peace said.
“Lafarge
did this not merely in exchange for permission to operate its cement plant —
which would have been bad enough — but also to leverage its relationship with
ISIS for economic advantage.”
Lafarge invested 680 million euros
in the construction of its plant in Syria, which was completed in 2010 — just
a year before the outbreak of the ongoing war that is estimated to have killed
more than half a million people.
Rights activists have expressed
hope the case would serve as a bellwether for prosecuting multinationals
accused of turning a blind eye to terrorist operations in exchange for
continuing to operate in war-torn countries.
In its own statement,
Lafarge said: “Lafarge SA and LCS have accepted responsibility for the actions
of the individual executives involved, whose behavior was in flagrant
violation of Lafarge’s Code of Conduct.
“We deeply regret that
this conduct occurred and have worked with the US Department of Justice to
resolve this matter.”
Holcim Group, the Swiss conglomerate which took over Lafarge in 2015, said the
US Justice Department had cleared it of any wrongdoing.
It said it
only learned of the allegations in 2016, and launched its own probe and
cooperated with US justice authorities.
“None of the conduct
involved Holcim, which has never operated in Syria, or any Lafarge operations
or employees in the United States, and it is in stark contrast with everything
that Holcim stands for,” it said in a separate statement.
Culled
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