On Sept. 7, France’s Court of Cassation, the highest court in the country, overturned a decision by a lower court to dismiss charges brought against Lafarge for its alleged complicity in crimes against humanity in Syria’s civil war.
Lafarge, which is now part of Switzerland-based Holcim, is a leading producer of cement, construction aggregates and concrete.
According to Reuters, the company is under investigation for its tactics used to keep one of its factories running in Syria after civil war broke out in 2011. Chiefly, the company has admitted that its Syrian subsidiary paid armed militant groups, including the Islamic State terrorist group, to protect the plant’s workers. These payments, which were close to $15 million according to several human rights groups, went towards paying militants for raw material and oil, as well as for allowing the safe passage of workers through checkpoints.
While one of France’s lower courts threw out a charge of complicity against the company in 2019, stating that Lafarge had not knowingly associated itself with crimes against humanity, the Court of Cassation is now stating that an entity could be complicit by willfully ignoring the ramifications of its actions.
"In this case, the payment of several million dollars ... to an organization which is actively criminal is enough to characterize that complicity, whether or not the party in question was only doing so to pursue a commercial activity," the court stated in its ruling.
As part of its ruling, France’s Supreme Court said that magistrates should continue investigating Lafarge’s request to have the crimes against humanity charge levied against the company thrown out.
If the charge of complicity is reinstated against Lafarge, it would mark the first time in the country’s history that a French company has been tried for such a crime.
No trial date has been set, and the investigation into Lafarge’s payments is still ongoing.
Lafarge has stated that it "continues to cooperate fully with the French judicial authorities,” but offered no further comments on the matter.