The US Justice Department said on Tuesday that French cement firm Lafarge SA, which admitted guilt to giving material assistance to the Islamic State and other terrorist organisations during the Syrian Civil War, will pay a $778 million punishment.
Lafarge revealed that in 2013 and 2014, long after other companies had left the country, it paid millions of euros to middlemen to keep its Syrian cement facility operating. The Justice Department called this decision “unthinkable.”
A French court earlier this year determined that the business knew that a significant portion of the funds were used to fund 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 organisations in Syria,” the company said.
In a statement to the Justice Department, US Attorney Breon Peace denounced Lafarge’s activities. “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 organisations, 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 spent 680 million euros building its facility in Syria, which was finished in 2010, just a year before the start of the continuing conflict, which is thought to have killed over 500,000 people.
Rights advocates have expressed hope that the case may act as a benchmark for the prosecution of multinational corporations accused of covering up terrorist activities in order to continue doing business in conflict zones.
In its own statement, Lafarge said: “Lafarge SA and LCS have accepted responsibility for the actions of the individual executives involved, whose behaviour 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.”