Business 'at all costs'

Maximum fine sought for cement maker Lafarge over terror financing

French prosecutors have sought a record fine and prison sentences of up to eight years in the trial of Lafarge, accusing the cement giant of paying armed groups including the Islamic State to keep its Syrian factory operating.


Issued on: 17/12/2025 - RFI

Former Lafarge chief executive Bruno Lafont arrives at a Paris court on 4 November 2025. Prosecutors have requested a six-year prison sentence with a delayed committal order for Lafont in the terrorism financing trial. 

AFP - DIMITAR DILKOFF

Anti-terrorism prosecutors are asking the court to impose the maximum corporate fine of €1.2 million on Lafarge SA and prison terms of up to eight years for several former executives.

The case centres on payments allegedly made between late 2012 and 2014 to armed groups in northern Syria, including the Islamic State group.

After more than six hours of closing arguments, prosecutors said Lafarge deliberately financed terrorist organisations to maintain operations at its Jalabiya cement plant in northern Syria.

They said the company paid “at least” €4.6 million to armed groups. The sum was described as unprecedented and shocking.

“Four million euros represents more than 4,000 Kalashnikovs or the salaries of between 3,500 and 6,600 Islamic State fighters for a year,” one of the prosecutors said, based on known monthly payments of $50 to $100 per fighter.

Lafarge on trial in Paris over alleged payments to Islamic State in Syria

Business 'at all costs'

She described the figure as “dizzying” and said it revealed a system that treated terrorist groups as “economic partners and commercial interlocutors”, rather than as enemies.

Prosecutors firmly rejected the defence claim that the defendants were unaware of who they were dealing with.

“No, there is no doubt,” the prosecutor said. “They knew they were talking to, negotiating with and doing business with three organisations that were clearly terrorist.”

She described the case as “the story of the total failure of individuals who could have chosen to leave” and “the story of the distortion of a flagship of French industry that ended up financing terrorist organisations for a purely mercantile objective”.

The prosecutor said the approach was driven by the pursuit of “business at all costs” and carried out through coordinated actions across the company. Decision-makers, advisers on the ground and intermediaries all played a role.

“Whatever their position in the operational chain, each one contributed to making the alleged offences possible,” she added.

Her colleague said the defendants had shown no remorse and had not questioned their actions during the trial.

Executives on trial

Prosecutors requested a six-year prison sentence, with a delayed committal order, for former Lafarge chief executive Bruno Lafont.

They accused him of making a “purely economic choice, astonishing in its cynicism” by approving payments while fully aware that some of the groups involved were terrorist organisations.

They said Lafarge’s Syrian subsidiary behaved like “a commercial animal” that “voluntarily fed the jihadist beast at the very moment it was seeking forces to structure itself, dominate and attack”.

The subsidiary financed terrorism for more than a year and a half, prosecutors said, following a strategy approved at the group’s Paris headquarters.

Alongside the corporate fine, prosecutors requested the confiscation of €30 million of Lafarge’s assets.

For individual defendants, prison sentences ranging from 18 months to eight years were sought. The heaviest sentence was requested for a Syrian intermediary who is absent from the trial.

Additional penalties, including fines and bans on managing companies, were also sought for some of the accused.

(with newswires)