Lafarge only cared about its bottom line. That way of thinking will be the death of the West.
“French firm pleads guilty to paying millions to ISIS,” Associated Press, October 19, 2022:
French cement company Lafarge pleaded guilty Tuesday to paying millions of dollars to the Islamic State group to keep a plant operational in Syria — at a time when the militant group was engaged in torturing kidnapped Westerners — and agreed to pay roughly $778 million in penalties.
The US Justice Department accused the company of turning a blind eye to the conduct of the Islamic State, negotiating a revenue-sharing agreement with the militant group as it was acquiring new territory and as Syria was mired in a brutal civil war. The company’s actions, already investigated by French law enforcement authorities, occurred before it merged with Swiss company Holcim to form the world’s largest cement maker.
Justice Department officials described it as the first case in which a company has pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Lafarge and a long-defunct Syrian subsidiary entered the plea in federal court in Brooklyn, agreeing to criminal fines of $90.78 million and a forfeiture of $687 million.
“There is no justification – none – for a multi-national corporation authorizing payments to a designated terrorist group. Such payments are egregious violations of our laws, justify maximum scrutiny by U.S. authorities, and warrant severe punishment,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official.
Lafarge pursued economic advantage
Prosecutors say the company paid through intermediaries nearly $6 million to IS and al-Nusrah Front, another militant group, in 2013 and 2014. The fixed monthly payments weren’t because of the company’s ideological alignment with the groups, the Justice Department said, but made purely in pursuit of an economic advantage.
The company had constructed a $680 million plant in northern Syria in 2011, and facing competition from cheaper cement imported from Turkey, regarded the payments to IS as a way to ensure the continued operations of the plant and to protect its employees and the transport of raw materials into the facility.
The Justice Department accused the company of using fake contracts and falsified invoices to hide the partnerships, and of committing to a revenue-sharing agreement with IS in hopes that it would incentivize the group to protect the company’s interests.
In one message, a company executive told colleagues that “we have to maintain the principle that we are ready to share the ‘cake,’ if there is a cake.’”
And after Lafarge evacuated the plant in September 2014, IS took possession of the cement that the company had produced and sold it at prices that would have yielded the group about $3.21 million, prosecutors say.
The payments came at a time when other companies were pulling operations out of the region and at a time when beheading videos released as publicity by IS made clear to the world the Islamic State’s barbaric actions.
Charging documents, for instance, quote an Aug. 20, 2014, email exchange in which company officials describe their negotiations with IS, with one talking about the need to check with a company lawyer about “the consequences of this kind of deal.” One day earlier, IS had released a grisly video of the murder of freelance American journalist James Foley.
“Make no mistake: Lafarge and its leadership had every reason to know exactly with whom they were dealing — and they didn’t flinch,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Tuesday.
“Instead,” she added, “Lafarge forged ahead, working with ISIS to keep operations open, undercut competitors, and maximize revenue. And all the while, through their support and funding, Lafarge enabled the operations of a brutal terrorist organization.”…
Wellington says
Proving again that capitalism, like democracy, becomes a sham and twisted version of itself without a proper ethical sense.
mick says
Oil majors receive requests for baksheesh, (outside contractual payments to the landowner).When it was essential, and beyond the wallet of a local manager, BP used to build a village school or dig a well instead.
So I was told by an ex field superintendent re Libya.
They did not pay enough to stop Gaddafis mob setting fire to the oil fields ca 1963. Red Adair was called up.
Keith O says
This is treason, pure and simple.
Wellington says
“This is treason, pure and simple.”
It is, but nothing will happen here other than some “money payments” and which payments will almost certainly be written off for tax purposes and thus nothing more will come of this—and it will happen again and again and again, only the business in question functioning as a variable, all the while the West continues to destroy itself because most in the West have utterly lost a sense of what made the West great to begin with.
What constitutes treason is no longer what it used to be and one of many reasons that the West is descending quick like. There are other reasons but they all add up to a mindless self-immolation by the West. Yes, we are living witnesses to the very possible ending of the greatest civilization in history and most people are either unaware of this or, in the alternative, are rooting it on.
Madness. Sheer madness. Life so often times is an idiot.
James Lincoln says
Wellington says,
“…nothing will happen here other than some “money payments” and which payments will almost certainly be written off for tax purposes and thus nothing more will come of this”
Yes, that is most likely scenario.
The Lafarge company officials who were involved in this should do “hard time” for treason.
gravenimage says
France: Cement company Lafarge pleads guilty to paying millions of dollars to the Islamic State
…………………………………..
Yes–I just heard about this appalling case. Glad they have been called on it.
But my guess is that Lafarge is far from the only Western company doing paying off Jihadists to leave them alone.
mick says
To protect plant in high risk zones, you either have to buy the President’s army (eg China in Africa), or you need US, British….. military support, eg BP’s oil fields in WW2.
Churchill bought a 51% stake in BP (fka Anglo Persian) in WW1, to ensure continuity of supply to the navy. 2 directors with political and military connections sat on the board.