₦airaland Forum

French cement giant guilty of financing militant groups including Islamic State

French cement maker Lafarge has been found guilty of paying millions of dollars in protection money to jihadist groups, including the group calling itself Islamic State (IS), to keep its business running in Syria during the civil war.

Eight ex-Lafarge employees were also found guilty of financing terrorism, including former CEO Bruno Lafont who was jailed for six years on Monday.

The court in Paris found that Lafarge paid groups $6.5m (€5.59m; £4.83m) between 2013 and 2014 to keep its plant operating in northern Syria.

Judge Isabelle Prevost-Desprez said such payments had allowed proscribed organisations to gain control of the country's natural resources, enabling them to finance attacks across the Middle East and Europe.

"It is clear to the court that the sole purpose of the funding of a terrorist organisation was to keep the Syrian plant running for economic reasons. Payments to terrorist entities enabled Lafarge to continue its operations," Prevost-Desprez said.

"These payments took the form of a genuine commercial partnership with IS," she added.

Lafarge told the BBC it acknowledged the court's finding, which it said "concerns a legacy matter involving conduct that occurred more than a decade ago and was in flagrant violation of Lafarge's code of conduct".

It described the decision as an "important milestone" in the company's actions to "address this legacy matter responsibly".

The factory in Jalabiya, northern Syria, was bought by Lafarge in 2008 for $680m and began operations in 2010, months before civil war began in 2011.

Prosecutors said Lafarge employees were housed in the nearby town of Manbig and needed to cross the Euphrates river to access the plant.

Payments were made between 2013 and September 2014, prosecutors said, and included €800,000 to secure safe passage and €1.6m to purchase source materials from quarries under Islamic State control.

Nusra Front, which was affiliated to al-Qaeda and proscribed by the EU and others, was also among the groups Lafarge paid money to, judges said.

Alongside Lafont, former deputy managing director Christian Herrault was given a five-year prison sentence, while Firas Tlass, a Syrian ex-member of staff who made the payments to the jihadist groups, was sentenced in absentia to seven years in jail.

Herrault had argued that the decision to keep the factory open was made out of concern for local staff.

"We could have washed our hands of it and walked away, but what would have happened to the factory's employees?" he said.

Lafarge, now owned by Swiss conglomerate Holcim, was fined more than €1m ($1.3m).

A separate investigation relating to complicity in crimes against humanity is ongoing.

The case was the first time a company was tried in France for financing terrorism.

It follows a 2022 case in the United States, when the firm admitted supporting proscribed groups and agreed to pay a $777.8m (£687.2m) penalty for payments it made to keep a factory running.

Civil war erupted in Syria in March 2011, following opposition to then-president Bashar al-Assad's brutal repression of anti-government protests.

IS jihadists seized large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, declaring a so-called cross-border "caliphate" and implementing their brutal interpretation of Islamic law.

DrugPRESIDENT01:
God bless Israel for exposing this to the world and yet assalamualaikum people hate Israel

This same larfarge has contracts all over Nigeria even under the cocaine pusher and no one said pin

We are waiting for the expose of the Lebanese friend of tinubu also maybe he is sponsoring Hezbollah

fyzaila:
Which kain lie be this biko, they just want to sabotage a company for nothing

BlackViper:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crl1441816po

angelboy01:
I used to work in this company. Omoh I know believe this o. Lol

fyzaila:
Which kain lie be this biko, they just want to sabotage a company for nothing

angelboy01:
I used to work in this company. Omoh I know believe this o. Lol

LagosOrigin:
Are you normal at all?

Even the lafarge has admitted that truly they were involved in financing terrorism and here you are talking nonsense . E no supposed better for you .

Eraddray:
All this international business owners in Nigeria need to be watched

EkoIle1:
It is now abundantly clear that President Jonathan has finally bared his fangs confirming what was widely speculated. By declaring a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, he has intimidated and emasculated the governors of these States. We are witnessing a dangerous trend in the art of governance and a deliberate ploy to subvert constitutional democracy.

The body language of the Jonathan administration leads any keen watcher of events with unmistakable conclusion of the existence of a surreptitious but barely disguised intention to muzzle the elected governments of these states for what is clearly a display of unpardonable mediocrity and diabolic partisanship geared towards 2015.

Borno and Yobe states have been literally under armies of occupation with the attendant excruciating hardship experienced daily by the indigenes and residents of these areas. This government now wants to use the excuse of the security challenges faced by the Governors to remove them from the states considered hostile to the 2015 PDP/Jonathan project.

Let me be quick to say that this administration will be setting in motion a chain of events the end of which nobody can predict. Experience has shown clearly that actions, such as this one under consideration, often give root to radical ideologies and extremist tendencies, a direct opposite of the intended outcome of unwarranted and unintelligent meddlesomeness. The present scenario playing out in the country reminds one of the classical case of a mediocre craftsman who continually blames the tools of his trade for his serial failure but refuses to look at his pitiable state with a view to adjusting.

It has become crystal clear, even to the most incurable optimist, that the country is adrift. That the ship of the Nigerian state is rudderless is clearly evident in the consistent and continual attacks ferociously executed by elements often referred to as the insurgents in some northern states of the federation, particularly Borno and Yobe states respectively.

Indeed, no part of the country is immune from the virulent but easy attacks, veritable indices of a failing state. Unfortunately, the tenuous and uncoordinated approach adopted by this government betrays a grossly incompetent disposition which stands at variance with current realities in the country, nay the international community where acts of terrorism are engaged and contained. No Governor of a state in Nigeria is the Chief Security Officer. Putting the blame on the Governors, who have been effectively emasculated, for the abysmal performance of the government at the centre which controls all these security agencies, smacks of ignorance and mischief.

Terrorist acts are perpetrated routinely and the government at the centre appears incapable of stemming the tide of the horrendous crimes unleashed on the hapless populace. The considerable ease, with which lives and property are destroyed on a daily basis, should excite deep introspection on the part of a government truly desirous of finding a lasting solution.

The Constitution provides that the safety and welfare of citizens shall be the primary purpose of having that structure of any political leadership in the first instance. This Government, through acts of omission and commission, has fallen far short of expectation. It actively encourages schisms and all manner of divisive tendencies for parochial expediency. Ethnicity and religion become handy weapons of domination. Things have never been this bad.



http://premiumtimesng.com/opinion/134435-jonathan-goes-for-broke-by-bola-ahmed-tinubu.html

fyzaila:
E no go supposed better for you too. Are you the poster?? What's your own sef

LagosOrigin:
You're probably from the north and one of the lovers of terrorism against the Nigerian state ..
You're a terrorist.