The verdict was delivered on April 13, 2026, at the Paris Criminal Court.
Lafarge, now part of the Swiss conglomerate Holcim, made payments totalling €5.59m (approximately $6.5m) between 2013 and 2014 through its Syrian subsidiary, Lafarge Cement Syria.
The funds were used to secure safe passage for employees and trucks, purchase raw materials from quarries under militant control, and maintain overall operations in the conflict zone.
The presiding judge ruled that the payments created a commercial partnership with the terrorist groups, driven purely by economic motives to sustain the plant’s activities.
Lafarge was ordered to pay a fine of €1.125m, the maximum penalty available for the company. Former chief executive Bruno Lafont was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to begin serving the term immediately. His lawyers plan to appeal the verdict.
Former deputy managing director Christian Herrault received a five-year jail term. Eight former employees in total were convicted, with sentences ranging up to seven years in one case delivered in absentia.
Lafarge had acquired the cement factory in Jalabiya, near Kobani in northern Syria, in 2008 for about $680m and started production in 2010, just before the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011.
While many multinational companies withdrew from Syria as the conflict intensified, Lafarge evacuated its expatriate staff but left local Syrian employees in place and continued operations until Islamic State seized the plant in September 2014.
Investigations revealed that the company negotiated deals with various armed factions, including monthly security payments and revenue-sharing arrangements that allowed it to generate tens of millions of dollars in sales revenue during the period.
The case first came to light through media investigations and a criminal complaint filed in 2016 by 11 former Syrian employees, together with non-governmental organisations Sherpa and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.
It led to years of legal proceedings, including rulings by France’s highest court that paved the way for the terrorism financing trial, which ran for six weeks from November to December 2025.
A separate investigation into possible complicity in crimes against humanity remains ongoing.
Lafarge has described the matter as a legacy issue from more than a decade ago that violated its own code of conduct.
The company noted the verdict as an important milestone in addressing past conduct responsibly.
The French ruling follows a 2022 guilty plea in the United States, where Lafarge admitted conspiring to provide material support to terrorist groups and paid a record $778 million in fines and forfeiture.
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