Lafarge charged with complicity in Syria crimes against humanity

The French cement giant Lafarge was charged on Thursday with complicity in crimes against humanity and financing terrorists, for allegedly paying millions to jihadists, including the Islamic State group, to keep a factory open in war-torn Syria.

The company, whose Syrian subsidiary paid the armed groups through intermediaries, has also been charged with endangering the lives of former employees at the cement plant in Jalabiya, northern Syria.

Lafarge, which has since merged with Swiss firm Holcim, immediately said it would appeal against the charges.

ISIS seized tons of toxic Hydrazine material from Lafarge Cement in 2014: documents

French cement company in Syria buys oil from ISIS: documents

The French rights group Sherpa, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said it was the first time that a parent company anywhere in the world had been charged with complicity in crimes against humanity.

The allegations are the most serious against a French company in years.

A panel of three judges in Paris ordered Lafarge to hand over €30m (£27m) to authorities as a security deposit ahead of the trial.

Eight former executives, including the former chief executive Bruno Lafont, have already been charged with financing a terrorist group and/or endangering the lives of others over Lafarge’s activities in Syria between 2011 and 2015.

Lafarge is suspected of paying nearly €13m to Isis and other militant groups to keep the Jalabiya plant running long after other French companies had pulled out of Syria.

The payments by the Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS) subsidiary were considered a “tax” in exchange for which militants allowed free movement of the company’s staff and goods inside the war zone, according to investigators.

It is claimed that some of the cash was also used to buy petrol and other raw materials from suppliers close to Isis.

A source close to the inquiry said investigators also suspected that Lafarge sold cement to Isis.

Lafarge, which merged with Holcim in 2015, said it would take legal action to get the charges dropped, insisting that the company as a whole was not responsible.

“We deeply regret what happened in our Syrian subsidiary and as soon as we were informed, we immediately took firm measures,” said Beat Hess, board president of LafargeHolcim. “None of the people charged is part of the company today.”

The company acknowledged in a statement that its “supervision of its Syrian subsidiary did not allow it to identify failures arising from an unprecedented breach of internal rules and regulations by people who have left the group”.

The criminal charges “do not fairly reflect Lafarge’s responsibilities” for what happened, it added.

The Sherpa rights group hailed the decision to charge the company, saying it was “a decisive step in the fight against the impunity of multinationals operating in armed conflict zones”.

It had launched the legal case against Lafarge alongside the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and 11 former employees.

“The activities of Lafarge in Syria, in a context where extremely violent crimes had been committed – even right outside the factory – are a perfect illustration of how multinationals can feed conflicts,” said the ECCHR legal director, Miriam Saage-Maass.

“That the courts are finally recognising the scope and seriousness of these allegations is absolutely historic.”

Several companies have previously faced allegations of complicity in crimes against humanity, though usually the cases have been dropped.

Twelve Nigerians took the Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell to court in the US over allegations of torture and other human rights abuses in the Niger delta in the 1990s, but the supreme court blocked the case in 2013.

In 2007, France’s top administrative court said it did not have the legal authority to rule on whether state rail operator SNCF could be held responsible for the deportation of Jews during the second world war.

In February 2016, Zaman al-Wasl in an exclusive report revealed how the giant Cement group LafargeHolcim struck oil deals with ISIS and how tons of toxic materials were delivered to the radical group.

Zaman’s exclusive report stood behind the sack of Eric Olsen, LafargeHolcim’s executive officer, according to the company statement on Monday. Such a decision took a while but still not enough unless an international law case should be filed against the French company, Syrian activists said.

French NGO Sherpa filed a complaint accusing the company of maintaining commercial relations with ISIS, AFP reported.

The French Le Monde newspaper published a report discussing Lafarge’s relationship with the Islamic State based on Zaman al-Wasl’s report on 21 June 2016.

At the time, Zaman al-Wasl directed questions to Federic Jolibois, the executive president of Lafarge in Syria, about the company activities. Jolibois said that his company, “does not respond to guesses and rumors.” He insisted that the company, “adheres to United Nations decisions.” He then explained, “Security is our primary priority, and so we suspended all our industrial and commercial activities in Syria since September 2014. At that time we evacuated the al-Jabaliya site entirely (The Lafarge cement factory in the Jabaliya town that is subordinate to Ayn Arab in north eastern Aleppo), and we officially banned our employees from going to the site.”

Zaman al-Wasl was the first media outlet globally to open the file of Lafarge’s relationship with the Islamic State. Zaman al-Wasl relied on email correspondence among high-ranking company officials revealing that Lafarge was involved in buying oil from “non-governmental organizations” in areas outside the regime’s control. In the summer of 2014, Bruno Pescheux, the General Manager of Lafarge, suggested several excuses and alibis the company may use to justify buying oil “illegally.” In addition, the company was selling the Islamic State forces cement.

In the autumn of 2014, a prominent official in the Islamic State directed a sharp message to the executive president of Lafarge warning him that the company needed to pay the financial dues owed to the Islamic State. He recommended the company understand that they are “dealing with the strongest Islamic Army on earth, and the company does not want to ruin its relationship with them.”

In the second part of its investigation, Zaman al-Wasl showed that the Lafarge company stored the dangerous Hydrazine chemical into its factory headquarters before these fell into the hands of the Islamic State.

Hydrazine is used to treat water for electrical generation processes, but the substance is also used for other things such as preparing explosives and as fuel for rockets.

According to Zaman al-Wasl sources, Lafarge held a large storage of the substance in its factory in Syria, and no one is sure what the Islamic State forces used the chemical for after they took control of the factory.

Other than the dangerous Hydrazine chemical, Lafarge had equipment carrying radioactive material in its factory laboratories, as well as a Gamma Matrix Device and a density measurement device which were all subject to periodical checks by the Atomic Energy Committee due to the danger and extreme sensitivity of this material. Any attempt to dismantle or move the ground equipment would spread radiation harmful to humans and the surrounding environment.

During the past few years, the map of control of the Lafarge-Syria factory located in Ayn al-Arab countryside changed. In August 2013 the area went out of regime control and became part of territory controlled by the Kurdish Protection Units, the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party which is considered an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

On 19 September 2014, the Islamic State forces managed to gain control of the Syria-Lafarge factory and kick out the Protection Units. The Units returned in the spring of 2015 and kicked out the Islamic State forces.