French Lafarge charged over paying Syria terror groups

By Hajer M'tiri

PARIS (AA) - Swiss-French cement company LafargeHolcim was charged Thursday with complicity in crimes against humanity and financing a terrorist enterprise in Syria.

The preliminary charges targeting the cement giant also include the violation of embargo and endangering others, French daily Le Monde reported, quoting a judicial source.

Prosecutors last year put several senior former managers of Lafarge and LafargeHolcim under formal investigation and charged some with financing terrorism.

The allegations relate to Lafarge before it merged with Swiss firm Holcim in 2015.

The French company is said to have paid Daesh and other terrorist groups around $5.6 million between 2012 and 2014 to keep its plant in northern Syria open during the civil war.

Lafarge's Syrian subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria is also thought to have used fake contracts to buy fuel from Daesh. LafargeHolcim has admitted the company had behaved unacceptably to keep the factory running.

Lafarge remained in Syria for two years after most Western companies had left.