A Paris court on Monday convicted French cement maker Lafarge of financing terrorism, sentencing former chief executive Bruno Lafont to six years in prison and ordering €30 million in company assets confiscated, a punitive measure that is more than 26 times the €1.125 million maximum statutory fine also imposed.
Lafarge has been convicted.
Paid jihadists to keep a factory running.
$680M invested. $778M in fines.
Eight executives personally liable.
They called it protecting the business.
The court called it financing terrorism.
Same decision
Different scale
Every conflict market pic.twitter.com/jbgVVRsHbg
— Ascendance Strategies (@AscenStrategies) April 13, 2026
The court found that Lafarge, now a subsidiary of Swiss conglomerate Holcim, paid €5.593 million ($6.53 million) through its subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS) to jihadist groups including Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra Front between 2013 and September 2014.
The Paris criminal court on Monday convicted French cement company Lafarge and eight of its former executives of financing terrorism after determining that the firm had paid around 5.6 million euros to three jihadist groups, primarily ISIS, to keep its factory operating in Syria… pic.twitter.com/krNxXmuTG8
— Levant24 (@Levant_24_) April 13, 2026
Payments of €800,000 secured safe passage for company trucks and staff, while €1.6 million purchased raw materials from IS-controlled quarries surrounding the Jalabiya plant in northern Syria.
Presiding Judge Isabelle Prevost-Desprez said the arrangement constituted “a genuine commercial partnership with the Islamic State” enabling the group to finance attacks “within the region and those planned abroad, particularly in Europe.”
Eight former Lafarge employees were convicted alongside the company. Former deputy managing director Christian Herrault received five years, and Firas Tlass, a Syrian intermediary who facilitated the payments, was sentenced in absentia to seven years.
Former Syrian Lafarge workers said they remain without compensation a decade after filing the original complaint. “Lafarge was aware of what was happening to us, the checkpoints, the threats, the daily fear, but chose to risk the lives of its employees for profit,” former employees said in a post-verdict statement.
Lafarge said the ruling “concerns a legacy matter involving conduct that occurred more than a decade ago and was in flagrant violation of Lafarge’s code of conduct.”
A separate investigation into alleged complicity in crimes against humanity in Syria remains ongoing in France.
In 2022, Lafarge pleaded guilty to providing material support to designated terrorist organizations in the United States and agreed to pay $777.8 million in penalties.
