Already in autumn 2022, Lafarge pleaded guilty in the US to conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist group and paid a fine of 778 million dollars (17.5 billion crowns) to the US Department of Justice. It was the first case in which a company was successfully prosecuted, and not its leaders. The verdict led to the French court agreeing in January this year that the company could be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, Reuters reported. The lawsuits were filed by dozens of former Lafarge employees in Syria, along with two non-profit organizations Sherpa and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).
One of the Syrian employees, Mohammad A., states: “Lafarge not only continued its work, but recklessly endangered my life and the lives of my colleagues just for financial gains.”
Lafarge opened its cement plant in Džalabija in 2010. It employed 700 employees, including 350 permanent employees. It produced 8,000 tons of cement per day. It sold a ton for 60 dollars.
Employees at risk
However, the profit from the investment for 680 million dollars (15.3 billion crowns) was threatened during the Arab Spring. The civil war in Syria broke out on March 15, 2012, Jalabiya subsequently came under the control of the rebels. In June, Lafarge evacuated its foreign employees, most of them to Damascus, but director Bruno Pescheux moved to Cairo.
However, the cement plant continued to work and began to pay various armed groups fuel so that it could continue to operate. Trucks brought in limestone and took away cement. Concrete blocks were placed in front of the entrance and a high concrete fence surrounded the factory.
The company was managed on site by the manager for business in crisis areas, former Norwegian paratrooper Jacob Waernesss. When one of the Syrian employees asked him if he could evacuate the Syrian employees, Waernesss refused, saying that only foreigners were at risk. He suggested that if he didn’t like it, he could resign.
As the fighting escalated, Syrian President Bashar Assad had Manbij bombed. Hassan took unpaid leave to accompany his family to a safer location. When he was returning to work at the request of the manager, five members of the Free Syrian Army with automatic weapons stopped the minibus with him and eight other employees and kidnapped them. Although the company paid burning fees, it also had to pay a ransom in the amount of 200,000 dollars (roughly 4.5 million crowns).
Money for burning terrorists
Even then, however, the cement plant did not close. At the same time, Islamic terrorists, first from the Nusra Front and then from the Islamic State, gradually took control of the area. The United States placed these organizations on the list of terrorist organizations, and Lafarge paid them a bribe. Then the Islamic State built a checkpoint at the entrance to Jalabiya. It was decided that the negotiator of Firas Tlass will have 75,000 dollars per month (1.7 million crowns) available to ensure the export of at least 75,000 tons of cement per quarter.
Drivers were given handwritten passes issued by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant with the terrorist group’s black flag. At the request of director Pescheux, the company’s name never appeared on them. “For obvious reasons, the name Lafarge should never appear in any document. If necessary, use the word cement plant, but never Lafarge,” he said in one document.
The company tried not to be associated with the dubious business in any way. The money went from 54 different bank accounts and the communication was mostly from private e-mails.
The profit was shared with the Islamic State
When the Islamic State conquered Raqqa in 2014 and other large territories around Jalabiya fell into its hands, Lafarge started buying raw materials, including pozzolan (fine volcanic ash used as a binder) or diesel from traders whose activities were approved by the Islamic State or were directly part of it. One of the e-mails sent to the company is signed by the emir of the investment office of the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant. Lafarge paid not only firing fees, but also a share of the profit from each ton of cement sold to ensure smooth transportation.
Lafarge’s vice president for foreign operations at the time, Christian Herrault, wrote in an internal e-mail: “We must maintain the principle that we are ready to share the pie if there is a pie.” The e-mail was sent in July 2014, when Islamic the state took control of the north of Iraq in a flash.
When the Islamic State decided in May 2014 to stop importing cement from Turkey, on which it had imposed high tariffs, it turned to the cement company Lafarge to ensure its supply. Pescheux wrote in an e-mail that high tariffs on Turkish cement will not only ensure large revenues for the Islamic State, but will also increase sales of cement from the Lafarge factory, even if it will have to be shared with IS.
Even after it became clear that the Islamic State had begun massacring Yazidis in Iraq, the new director of the Syrian branch, Frédéric Jolibos, who replaced Pescheux in July, continued to negotiate a new deal with the terrorists. At a time when the United States approved airstrikes against the Islamic State, at a time when IS publicized the brutal execution of kidnapped journalist James Foley, Lafarge was still discussing the issues surrounding the Turkish cement tariff contract.
Only when, on September 10, 2014, Barack Obama announced the goal of destroying the Islamic State, the concrete company’s lawyer suggested terminating payments to the Islamic State. However, Jolibois rejected this, saying that it is not clear how the Jalabiya area could be freed from the grip of the Islamic State, and that the area will not be liberated for years. However, further events were no longer in the hands of the company. The cement plant was eventually occupied by the Islamic State.
Lafarge cement plant in Syria in 2022
Dirty deals with Islamic terrorists paid off for the company, The Guardian reported. Every month she had a profit of two million dollars and did not pay the radicals even a quarter of it. In addition, it profited from the war economy, when the price of a bag of cement doubled to 500 Syrian pounds. Lafarge sold cement for 70 million dollars (1.6 million pounds) during the period of cooperation with terrorists.
After the defeat of the Islamic State, the Lafarge company found itself under pressure. In 2022, in the US, she admitted to providing material to a terrorist group and paid a fine of 778 million dollars, which, of course, went to the US coffers, so 50 organizations called on the US government this May to compensate the victims. It was the first successful case since the end of the Second World War, when the company, and not only its top representatives, was condemned in this way. Lafarge also announced at that time that none of its bosses associated with business in Syria are no longer in office.
After the destruction of the Islamic State, the factory itself was used by Kurdish forces from the American-led coalition as a warehouse. When the Americans partially withdrew from Syria in 2019 based on Donald Trump’s decision, two F-15s bombed a part of the factory to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. Then the factory was completely destroyed by the Turks.
