Cement Company , Lafarge has pleaded guilty on Tuesday to paying millions of dollars to
the Islamic State group, IS, in exchange for permission to keep open a
plant in Syria.
The charges were announced by federal prosecutors in New York City and
by senior Justice Department leaders from Washington. The Justice
Department described it as the first instance in which a company has
pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a foreign
terrorist organisation.
According to Associated Press, the company has also agreed to penalties
totalling roughly $778 million.
Prosecutors accused Lafarge of turning a blind eye to the conduct of the
militant group, making payments to it in 2013 and 2014 as it occupied a
broad swath of Syria and as some of its members were involved in
torturing or beheading kidnapped westerners.
The company’s actions occurred before it merged with Swiss company
Holcim to form the world’s largest cement maker.
The payments were designed to ensure the continued operations of a
roughly $680 million plant that prosecutors say Lafarge had constructed
in 2011 at the start of the Syrian civil war. The money was to be used
to protect employees and keep a competitive edge.
“The defendants routed nearly six million dollars in illicit payments to
two of the world’s most notorious terrorist organisations — ISIS and
al-Nusrah Front in Syria — at a time those groups were brutalising
innocent civilians in Syria and actively plotting to harm Americans,”
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top
national security official, said in a statement.
“There is simply no justification for a multi-national corporation
authorising payments to designated terrorist organisations,” he added.
The allegations involve conduct that was earlier investigated by
authorities in France. Lafarge had previously acknowledged funneling
money to Syrian armed organisations in 2013 and 2014 to guarantee safe
passage for employees and supply its plant.
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