{"id":1879856,"date":"2026-04-13T11:55:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T08:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1879856"},"modified":"2026-04-13T11:55:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T08:55:51","slug":"france-ex-lafarge-ceo-jailed-for-funding-syrian-jihadists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1879856","title":{"rendered":"France: Ex-Lafarge CEO jailed for funding Syrian jihadists"},"content":{"rendered":"

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https:\/\/p.dw.com\/p\/5C5uR<\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n
Shortly before the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, Lafarge had invested a significant amount into a factory there [File: February 19, 2018]Image: Delil Souleiman\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A Paris court on Monday found the former CEO of Lafarge, Bruno Lafont, and eight other former employees guilty of financing terrorism in Syria.<\/a><\/p>\n

Lafont has reportedly been jailed for six years and the company ordered to pay a 1.125 million euro fine ($1.3 million). Seven other employees were also found guilty on terrorism charges.<\/p>\n

Judges determined that the world’s largest cement manufacturer<\/a> had funnelled some \u20ac5.6 million ($6.53 million) to groups including the “Islamic State”<\/a>(IS) and Nusra Front in order to keep their operations in the country going.<\/p>\n

“These payments took the form of a genuine commercial partnership \u200cwith the Islamic State,” said presiding Judge\u00a0Isabelle Prevost-Desprez<\/p>\n

Why was Lafarge involved in Syria?<\/h2>\n

A subsidiary of the Swiss building conglomerate Holcim, Lafarge is a major player in the construction industry worldwide.<\/p>\n

In 2010, it invested\u00a0\u20ac680 million into a factory in Syria, just a year before the country would be engulfed in Civil War for over a decade. While most multinationals had pulled out of Syria by 2012, Lafarge evacuated only its expatriate employees and left its Syrian workforce in place.<\/p>\n

Before the French case, it had already pled guilty in a US suit<\/a> to funding “IS” and Nusra Front between 2013 and 2015 so that its\u00a0Jalabiya plant could keep running.<\/p>\n

At the time, it was well-known that the groups were participating in torture, enslavement, and mass killings in the regions they occupied, which at times included the Lafarge plant.<\/p>\n

The case marked the first time in France<\/a> that a whole company was tried for financing terrorism.<\/p>\n

Edited by: Darko Janjevic<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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A Paris court on Monday found the former CEO of Lafarge, Bruno Lafont, and eight other former employees guilty of financing terrorism in Syria.<\/a><\/p>\n

Lafont has reportedly been jailed for six years and the company ordered to pay a 1.125 million euro fine ($1.3 million). Seven other employees were also found guilty on terrorism charges.<\/p>\n

Judges determined that the world’s largest cement manufacturer<\/a> had funnelled some \u20ac5.6 million ($6.53 million) to groups including the “Islamic State”<\/a>(IS) and Nusra Front in order to keep their operations in the country going.<\/p>\n

“These payments took the form of a genuine commercial partnership \u200cwith the Islamic State,” said presiding Judge\u00a0Isabelle Prevost-Desprez<\/p>\n

Why was Lafarge involved in Syria?<\/h2>\n

A subsidiary of the Swiss building conglomerate Holcim, Lafarge is a major player in the construction industry worldwide.<\/p>\n

In 2010, it invested\u00a0\u20ac680 million into a factory in Syria, just a year before the country would be engulfed in Civil War for over a decade. While most multinationals had pulled out of Syria by 2012, Lafarge evacuated only its expatriate employees and left its Syrian workforce in place.<\/p>\n

Before the French case, it had already pled guilty in a US suit<\/a> to funding “IS” and Nusra Front between 2013 and 2015 so that its\u00a0Jalabiya plant could keep running.<\/p>\n

At the time, it was well-known that the groups were participating in torture, enslavement, and mass killings in the regions they occupied, which at times included the Lafarge plant.<\/p>\n

The case marked the first time in France<\/a> that a whole company was tried for financing terrorism.<\/p>\n

Edited by: Darko Janjevic<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A Paris court on Monday found the former CEO of Lafarge, Bruno Lafont, and eight other former employees guilty of financing terrorism in Syria.<\/a><\/p>\n

Lafont has reportedly been jailed for six years and the company ordered to pay a 1.125 million euro fine ($1.3 million). Seven other employees were also found guilty on terrorism charges.<\/p>\n

Judges determined that the world’s largest cement manufacturer<\/a> had funnelled some \u20ac5.6 million ($6.53 million) to groups including the “Islamic State”<\/a>(IS) and Nusra Front in order to keep their operations in the country going.<\/p>\n

“These payments took the form of a genuine commercial partnership \u200cwith the Islamic State,” said presiding Judge\u00a0Isabelle Prevost-Desprez<\/p>\n

A subsidiary of the Swiss building conglomerate Holcim, Lafarge is a major player in the construction industry worldwide.<\/p>\n

In 2010, it invested\u00a0\u20ac680 million into a factory in Syria, just a year before the country would be engulfed in Civil War for over a decade. While most multinationals had pulled out of Syria by 2012, Lafarge evacuated only its expatriate employees and left its Syrian workforce in place.<\/p>\n

Before the French case, it had already pled guilty in a US suit<\/a> to funding “IS” and Nusra Front between 2013 and 2015 so that its\u00a0Jalabiya plant could keep running.<\/p>\n

At the time, it was well-known that the groups were participating in torture, enslavement, and mass killings in the regions they occupied, which at times included the Lafarge plant.<\/p>\n

The case marked the first time in France<\/a> that a whole company was tried for financing terrorism.<\/p>\n

Edited by: Darko Janjevic<\/em><\/p>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/static.dw.com\/image\/68003401_6.jpg”] https:\/\/p.dw.com\/p\/5C5uR Shortly before the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, Lafarge had invested a significant amount into a factory there [File: February 19, 2018]Image: Delil Souleiman\/AFP\/Getty Images A Paris court on Monday found the former CEO of Lafarge, Bruno Lafont, and eight other former employees guilty of financing terrorism in Syria. Lafont […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,74],"class_list":["post-1879856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-dw-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1879856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1879856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1879856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1879856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}