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.

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).

The company is yet to comment and 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.