Cement giant Lafarge is on trial in France for allegedly funding a terrorist group in Syria.

local time, the Paris Criminal Court of France opened a court hearing the case of Lafarge, a cement giant, suspected of making illegal payments to jihadist groups in Syria. The allegations show that during the tense civil war in Syria from 2013 to 2014, Lafarge paid millions of euros to the Syrian Jihad in order to maintain the normal operation of a local factory in Syria. The case against Lafarge and eight other defendants is currently before the

Paris Criminal Court. The defendants are accused of financing armed groups in Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and the Nusra Front (ANF), in order to keep their local subsidiaries operating. The trial is expected to last until December 16 .

The defendant include Bruno Lafont, former CEO of Lafarge Group (2007-2015), and two Syrian intermediaries accused of "financing terrorism". Judicial investigators said that from August 2013 to October 2014, Lafarge paid about $5.9 million (about 41 million yuan) to ISIS and ANF by paying monthly "security premiums" and purchasing raw materials.

Lafarge, which completed a $680 million factory

in northern Syria in 2010 before the outbreak of the civil war, was acquired by Holcim in 2015. Lafarge had spent about $680 million to build a plant in Jalabiyeh in northern Syria that opened in 2010, a year before the start of the country's civil war. In 2012, as the fighting escalated, Lafarge evacuated its foreign employees back home, but local Syrian employees continued to operate the plant.

In 2016, French anti-corruption NGO Sherpa filed a criminal complaint against Lafarge, saying the case was a landmark moment in the pursuit of corporate complicity in human rights abuses.

"This trial marks the culmination of years of work on corporate criminal liability," Anna Kiefer, Sherpa's litigation and advocacy officer, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (OCCRP). Sherpa and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) are holding Lafarge accountable and seeking compensation for its former Syrian employees.

"Lafarge did not invest resources to protect its Syrian employees during the Syrian civil war, but instead provided funds for armed groups.". "Nine years have passed since the lawsuit was filed, and we are still waiting for a fair decision," said Mr Mohammed, one of 11 former Lafarge Syrian employees involved in bringing the case. Lafarge's financial ties to ISIS were first exposed by a media investigation in

2016, which showed that the company paid up to 13 million euros (about 100 million yuan) to ensure the transportation of goods, negotiate through checkpoints and obtain raw materials.

In a similar case in the United States, in 2022, Lafarge pleaded guilty to charges that it provided material support to ISIS and agreed to pay a $778 million fine. The US Department of Justice said the company had signed a "revenue-sharing agreement" with the extremist group, which allowed Lafarge to keep its factory operating and earn more than $70m in revenue. As part of its guilty plea, Lafarge admitted that it had concealed the payments by falsifying records and backdating contracts.