French cement company Lafarge has been found guilty of paying ISIS and other armed groups protection money to keep open its cement plant during the civil war in Syria.
The Paris Criminal Court also convicted Lafarge of violating European sanctions. Sentencing is expected later on Monday, but Lafarge has faced a $1.2 million fine for funding terrorism and more for breaching sanctions.
Lafarge continued to operate its cement factory during the Syrian civil war until it was taken over by ISIS in 2014, and court documents showed it made payments to armed groups between 2013 and 2014 to protect these operations.
Judges determined Lafarge paid 5.59 million euros ($6.53m) to groups including ISIS and al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, both designated as terrorists by the EU, between 2013 and September 2014.
Lafarge's former chief executive Bruno Lafont was also found guilty of financing terrorism, alongside seven other former associates.
International group Holcim, which merged with Lafarge in 2015, has said it did not know about the Syria dealings.
In a similar case in America, Lafarge pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to US-designated terrorist organisations and agreed to pay a $778 million fine. It was the first time a corporation had faced the charge.
Spying or bribery?
Lafarge had maintained that the payments were made to protect its staff in Syria, who provided information to French intelligence services seeking information at the time on armed groups in the north of the country. The court also considered whether senior executives at Lafarge, including Mr Lafont, knew of the payments.
Five former members of the Syrian plant's operational and security staff and two Syrian intermediaries were among the defendants.
Syrian businessman Firas Tlass, whose family were close to the regime of former president Bashar Al Assad but defected by moving to Paris in 2012, was tried in his absence. He was a former minority stakeholder in Lafarge's Syria subsidiary and accused of distributing cash to armed groups through his contacts in the country.
Guilty verdicts were also given to Lafarge's former deputy chief operating officer Christian Herrault, as well as Bruno Pescheux and Frederic Jolibois, who were directors of the Syrian factory. Jacob Waerness, who used to serve in Norway's elite police, and Ahmad Jaloudi, a former colonel in the Jordanian army, were two former security managers found guilty.
Syrian-Canadian intermediary Amro Taleb was hired by LCS to negotiate with the armed groups.
Mr Herrault said during the trial in December that he kept the factory open to continue paying employees salaries. "We could wash our hands and leave, but what would have happened to the factory's employees if we'd left? We had a choice between two bad solutions: the worst one and the least worst," he said.
Lafarge got caught up in Syria's civil war after it finished building a $680 million factory in the north-eastern city of Jalabiya in 2010. The following year, Mr Al Assad cracked down on an uprising against his regime.
By 2012, the company was paying protection money to Kurdish armed groups who had taken control of part of the country. They were not considered terrorist organisations and later received western backing.
ISIS seized territory in Syria from 2013. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the US-led coalition, defeated the terrorist group in 2019.
While other multinational companies left the country in 2012, Lafarge only pulled out its foreign employees and left its Syrian staff in place until September 2014, when ISIS seized control of the factory.
Court documents show that, in 2013 and 2014, LCS paid intermediaries to gain access to raw materials from ISIS and other groups, as well as to allow free movement for the company's lorries and staff.
The inquiry was opened in France in 2017 after media reports and two legal complaints in 2016, one from the Finance Ministry for the alleged breach of an economic sanction and another from non-governmental groups and 11 former LCS staff over "funding of terrorism".
In the US case, the Justice Department said Lafarge sought ISIS help to squeeze out competitors, operating an effective "revenue sharing agreement" with the group. At the time, Mr Lafont, who was chief executive from 2007 to 2015, criticised the inquiry as "biased".
Another French investigation into Lafarge's alleged complicity with crimes against humanity is continuing. In the US, about 430 Americans of Yazidi descent, as well as Nobel laureate Nadia Murad, have filed a civil suit, accusing the company of supporting attacks through a conspiracy with ISIS.
