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A French company pleaded guilty Tuesday to paying terror groups, including the Islamic State, $6 million to keep a lucrative cement plant in Syria operating, marking the first time a corporation has been charged with supporting foreign terrorist organizations.
The Justice Department announced the guilty plea against Lafarge S.A., an international building materials manufacturer, after the firm was charged with conspiring to provide aid to the ISIS and the al-Nusrah Front, also known as al-Qaida in Syria, both U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations.
As part of the plea, the company was ordered to pay nearly $778 million in penalties.
Federal authorities said the scheme allowed the company to operate the cement plant for more than a year beginning in August 2013, producing about $70 million in revenue.
“In the midst of a civil war, Lafarge made the unthinkable choice to put money into the hands of ISIS, one of the world’s most barbaric terrorist organizations, so that it could continue selling cement,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said. “Lafarge did this not merely in exchange for permission to operate its cement plant – which would have been bad enough – but also to leverage its relationship with ISIS for economic advantage, seeking ISIS’s assistance to hurt Lafarge’s competition in exchange for a cut 2 of Lafarge’s sales.
