French cement firm admits paying IS nearly $6m to keep Syrian plant open
theguardian.comThe French cement company Lafarge pleaded guilty on Tuesday to paying millions of dollars to the Islamic State group in exchange for permission to keep open a plant in Syria, in a case the US justice department called the first of its kind. The company also agreed to penalties totalling about $778m (£688m).
Prosecutors accused Lafarge of turning a blind eye to the conduct of the militant group, making payments to it in 2013 and 2014 as IS occupied a broad swath of Syria and as some of its members were involved in torturing or beheading kidnapped westerners. The company’s actions occurred before it merged with a Swiss company Holcim, to form the world’s largest cement-making business.
The payments were designed to ensure the continued operations of a $680m plant that prosecutors say Lafarge had constructed 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 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 authorising payments to designated terrorist organisations.”
The charges were announced by federal prosecutors in New York City and by senior justice department leaders from Washington. The justice department said it was the first instance in which a company had pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation.
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