The appeal was filed in May 2022. The Court of Cassation on Tuesday definitively validated the indictment for complicity in crimes against humanity of the Lafarge company, which maintained a cement plant in Syria until 2014 despite the presence of jihadists.
However, the court definitively annulled his prosecution for endangering the lives of others, "French law not being applicable" to Syrian employees, the highest court of the French judicial order explained in a statement. Patrice Spinosi, Lafarge's lawyer, declined to comment.
According to the Court of Cassation, "in the absence of any contrary references to the employment contract, Syrian law was applicable to the employment relationship between the French company and the Syrian employees, since the latter were working in Syria". Moreover, "there is insufficient evidence to assert that the employment contracts of Syrian employees working in Syria had closer links with France". Lafarge cannot therefore be tried for endangering the lives of others.
Payment of millions of euros to jihadist groups
On the other hand, the company remains under investigation for complicity in crimes against humanity and financing a terrorist enterprise, the court's statement said. In 2013 and 2014, the group, now a subsidiary of Holcim, is suspected of having paid several million euros in <> and <> to jihadist groups, including the Islamic State (IS) group, as well as to intermediaries, in order to maintain the activity of a cement factory in Jalabiya, even as the country was sinking into war.
Lafarge was commissioned in 2010 and cost several hundred million euros and exfiltrated its foreign employees in 2012. But the company had its Syrian employees working until September 2014, when they were at risk of extortion and kidnapping. The cement plant was then evacuated in an emergency in September 2014, shortly before IS took over. NGOs and several Syrian employees filed complaints, leading to the opening of a judicial investigation in 2017.