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 US$778 million in penalties.
The Justice Department described it as the first case of its kind, accusing the company of turning a blind eye to the conduct of the Islamic State as the militant group gained new territory and as Syria was mired in a brutal civil war. The company's actions, already investigated by French authorities, occurred before it merged with Swiss company Holcim to form the world's largest cement maker.
Prosecutors say the company routed nearly $6 million to IS and al-Nusrah Front, another militant group, in 2013 and 2014. The payments weren't because of any ideological alignment, the Justice Department said, but rather for simple economic advantage. 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 American journalist James Foley.
In 2014, the company was handed preliminary charges including financing a terrorist enterprise and complicity in crimes against humanity. In a statement, Holcim said that when it learned of the allegations from the news media in 2016, it voluntarily conducted an investigation and disclosed the findings publicly. It fired the former Lafarge executives who were involved in the payments.
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