In October, investigating judges ordered French cement company Lafarge and four of its executives to face trial over allegations that the company paid terrorists between 2012 and 2014 to continue its operations in Syria. 

The company is alleged to have breached terrorist financing laws and violated an embargo by paying several million dollars via intermediaries to the Islamic state and other terrorist groups to secure the transportation of goods and employees after a civil war broke out in the country in 2011. 

The case was sparked by a criminal complaint against the company filed by non-governmental organisation Sherpa, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and 11 former Syrian employees in 2016. The complaint led to the indictment of Lafarge, its Syrian subsidiary and some of its executives, two years later. The terrorist financing trial is due to take place in Paris at the end of 2025. 

Lafarge did not respond to requests from Global Insight for comment. The company has reportedly said that the allegations ‘relate to a legacy issue from a decade ago that Lafarge SA is addressing through the legal process in France and the United States’. 

Anna Kiefer, an advocacy and litigation officer at Sherpa, says while she welcomes the terrorist financing trial, she hopes it won’t overshadow efforts to prosecute the company for complicity in crimes against humanity. ‘It should not divert attention away from the long wait for justice of former Syrian employees who will not obtain reparation during that trial,’ she says. ‘We continue to work for access to justice for them and towards a trial on the more important charge of complicity in crimes against humanity’. 

Sherpa and other activist groups involved in the case had wanted Lafarge to additionally be charged with endangering the lives of former Syrian employees. They groups argued that the workers faced many threats while working at its Syrian cement plant, including risks of injury, kidnapping and death. The Supreme Court didn’t grant the request, however, and ruled in January that the safety protections provided by French labour law do not apply to Syrian employees. 

Nicola Bonucci, the former director of legal affairs at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and a member of the IBA’s anti-corruption committee advisory board, suspects that the investigating judges are taking longer to send the complicity in crimes against humanity charge to trial because it is unprecedented and will most likely involve challenges around gathering evidence that the terrorist groups committed the crimes. ‘I think the issue is not so much the complicity but the need to establish that there is a crime against humanity based on the criminal threshold of beyond a reasonable doubt,’ he says. 

Bonucci says that the international business and legal community will be watching the outcome of the complicity in crimes against humanity charge closely to see whether companies could be exposed to increased risk. ‘I presume that a number of courts in other countries will also look at this and when you think about the fact that there are numerous ongoing situations, very delicate situations, including Gaza, in which allegations of crimes against humanity are on the table […] this could really open a big Pandora’s box for a number of companies,’ he says. 

Jonathan Mattout, the head of Herbert Smith Freehills’s corporate crime and investigations practice in Paris, says the question of whether a business should continue operating in a high-risk environment is complex and requires careful consideration by executives. ‘It is essential for the CEOs and board members of multinationals to have these issues at the top of their mind as a priority because they are very difficult to tackle,’ he says. ‘When things are changing slowly or sometimes very abruptly, they need to be able to respond so that people, as well as organisations, remain safe’. 

Mattout, who is also the co-chair of the IBA’s business crime committee, says that in the current political climate companies are becoming increasingly alert to legal risks. ‘They are becoming more aware of the risks operating as a multinational globally with the rise of conflicts, sanctions regimes and enforcement actions,’ he says. 

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