The group is suspected of having paid in 2013 and 2014, via a subsidiary, several million euros to terrorist groups, as well as to intermediaries, in order to maintain the activity of a cement plant in Syria. He announced that he wanted to initiate an appeal.
Le Monde with AFP
The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed, Wednesday, May 18, the indictment of the Lafarge cement group for “complicity of crimes against humanity” concerning its activities until 2014 in Syria, said Claire Tixeire, Legal advisor to the European Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights, after the hearing. The cement maker immediately announced that he wanted to initiate an appeal.
As part of this judicial information opened in June 2017 and the subject of many procedural twists and turns, the group – now a subsidiary of Holcim – is suspected of having paid in 2013 and 2014, via a subsidiary, several million euros to terrorist groups, including the Islamic State organization (IS), as well as intermediaries, in order to maintain the activity of a cement plant in Syria while the country sank into the war. The group had invested 680 million euros in the construction of this site, completed in 2010.
The Court of Appeal followed on this point the requisitions of the general prosecutor’s office, which believed that the company had “financed, via subsidiaries, IS activities up to several million dollars, with precise knowledge Actions “of the terrorist group.
this time the opinion of the general prosecutor’s office, the court of appeal pronounced the maintenance of the indictment of Lafarge for “endangering the life of others”, that is to say ex-Syrian employees who were led to continue their activity in the jalabiya cement plant while the region was plagued by civil war.
The group had obtained from the Paris Court of Appeal in November 2019 the cancellation of its indictment in 2018 for “complicity of crimes against humanity”. But in September 2021, the Court of Cassation, the highest French judicial court, had broken this decision from the Court of Appeal, as well as the maintenance of the group’s indictment for “endangering the life of others” . She had referred these two questions to the investigation chamber, in a different composition.
Lafarge lawyers, Christophe Ingrain, Rémi Lorrain and Paul Mallet, did not wish to comment. The civil parties welcomed an “emblematic” decision as well as an “important stage” in this judicial information opened in June 2017.