The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed on Wednesday the indictment of the cement group Lafarge for "complicity in crimes against humanity" concerning its activities until 2014 in Syria, we learned from sources close to the file. .
As part of this judicial investigation opened in June 2017 and subject to numerous procedural developments, the group, now a subsidiary of Holcim, is suspected of having paid in 2013 and 2014, via a subsidiary, several million euros to terrorist groups, including the Islamic State organization (IS), as well as to intermediaries, in order to maintain the activity of a cement factory in Syria while the country was sinking into the war.
His lawyers declined to comment.
A violent charge by the current boss against his predecessors
The chairman of the board of directors of the cement manufacturer Holcim, Beat Hess, accused in court the former leaders of Lafarge of having "hidden" their activities in Syria targeted by the justice during the merger in 2015 of the two groups.
During an interrogation by the Parisian investigating judges in charge of the case on November 29, revealed by Le Parisien, Beat Hess affirmed that "Holcim has nothing to do with the acts of former Lafarge executives who are the subject of the investigation" since June 2017. "All the events of the Syrian file were hidden from the Holcim company during the merger and the legal audit that preceded it", he underlined , presenting Holcim as "victim" and "betrayed".
Beat Hess has targeted as responsible the "former executives" indicted by the French justice, including the ex-CEO of Lafarge until 2015, Bruno Lafont.
