One of the world’s largest cement manufacturers faces French justice Tuesday over accusations it bankrolled the Islamic State and other jihadist groups to keep its factory running in war-ravaged Syria—a case that has already cost the company nearly $800 million in American fines and now threatens its reputation across Europe.
Lafarge, since absorbed by Swiss conglomerate Holcim, stands trial in Paris for allegedly funneling millions of dollars between 2013 and 2014 through its Syrian subsidiary to extremist organizations including ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s then-Al Qaeda affiliate. Prosecutors claim the payments purchased protection, ensured access to raw materials, and allowed company trucks and employees to move freely through territories controlled by groups infamous for mass executions and sexual enslavement.
The defendant list includes Lafarge itself, former director Bruno Lafont, five ex-operational and security staff members, and two Syrian intermediaries—one subject to an international arrest warrant and expected to remain absent. All face charges of “funding terrorism” and violating international sanctions.
If convicted on terrorism financing, Lafarge could face fines up to $1.2 million, though sanctions violations carry potentially far steeper penalties. Holcim, which acquired Lafarge in 2015, insists it had no knowledge of the Syrian dealings.
The case centers on Lafarge’s $680 million factory in Jalabiya, completed in 2010—just months before civil war erupted following Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in March 2011. As conflict metastasized to include multiple armed groups and foreign powers, most multinational corporations evacuated Syria by 2012.
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Lafarge took a different path. The company withdrew expatriate staff but kept Syrian employees working until September 2014, when ISIS fighters finally seized the facility. During those intervening years, prosecutors allege, Lafarge Cement Syria paid intermediaries to secure materials from ISIS and other factions while guaranteeing safe passage for operations.
ISIS had already established presence in northern Syria by 2013 before capturing vast territories across Syria and Iraq in 2014, declaring a so-called caliphate where they imposed savage interpretations of Islamic law—public executions, amputation of thieves’ hands, and sexual enslavement of Yazidi women.
Kurdish-led Syrian fighters, backed by U.S.-led coalition airpower, ultimately defeated ISIS and dismantled its proto-state in 2019. But questions about who enabled the group’s operations during its peak years have lingered.
French authorities opened an inquiry in 2017 following media reports and two 2016 legal complaints—one from the finance ministry alleging sanctions violations, another from NGOs and 11 former Lafarge Syria employees accusing the company of terrorism financing.
The Paris trial, scheduled through mid-December, follows Lafarge’s guilty plea in the United States to conspiring to provide material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations. The Justice Department said Lafarge effectively operated a “revenue sharing agreement” with ISIS to squeeze out competitors—the first time such charges targeted a corporation. The company paid $778 million to settle.
Lafont, who served as CEO from 2007 through the 2015 Holcim merger, previously dismissed the investigation as “biased.” A separate French probe into potential crimes against humanity remains ongoing.
In the U.S., roughly 430 Americans of Yazidi background and Nobel laureate Nadia Murad have filed civil suit accusing Lafarge of enabling brutal attacks through its ISIS conspiracy—claims that keep the company entangled in litigation years after exiting Syria.
The trial forces uncomfortable questions about corporate responsibility in conflict zones where doing business requires engaging with whoever controls territory, regardless of their brutality.