Lafarge trial on terror financing in Syria in November 2025
Published: Wednesday, Oct 16th 2024, 18:40
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A trial against the French Holcim subsidiary Lafarge is likely to take place in France in just over a year's time. The case concerns the financing of terrorism in Syria.
On Wednesday, three investigating judges ordered proceedings against the Lafarge Group and eight people - including former managers - for terrorist financing, writes the French news agency AFP with reference to sources close to the case.
The cement manufacturer and the other defendants are accused of continuing their activities in Syria until 2014. The case dates back to the time before the takeover of Lafarge by the Swiss building materials group Holcim.
The trial against the Lafarge Group and the eight defendants - members of the operational or security chain, Syrian middlemen, as well as the then Lafarge CEO Bruno Lafont - is scheduled to take place from November 4 to December 9, 2025, according to AFP. The charges relate to the financing of terrorist enterprises and non-compliance with international financial sanctions in some cases.
Lafarge is suspected of having paid five million euros to jihadist groups - including the Islamic State (IS) organization - and middlemen via its Syrian subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS) in 2013 and 2014 to keep a cement factory in Jalabiya running while the country sank deeper and deeper into war.
The part of the judicial investigation opened in June 2017 concerning the company's suspected complicity in crimes against humanity has not yet been concluded.
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