- Nigerian affiliate, Lafarge Africa Plc, was not yet implicated in the payment to ISIS and other terrorists’ groups
French cement giant Lafarge has pleaded guilty in the U.S. to supporting the Islamic State and other terror groups.
The firm agreed to a $777.8m (£687.2m) penalty for payments it made to keep a factory running in Syria after war broke out in 2011.
Lafarge said it “deeply regretted” the events and “accepted responsibility for the individual executives involved.”
The cement manufacturer, which was bought by Switzerland’s Holcim in 2015, said their behaviour had been in “flagrant violation” of Lafarge’s code of conduct.
The firm opened its plant in Jalabiya near the Turkish border in 2010 following a $680m investment.
US prosecutors said that Lafarge’s Syrian subsidiary had paid Islamic State and another terror group, al Nusra Front, the equivalent of $5.92m to protect staff at the plant as the country’s civil war intensified. Executives likened the arrangements to paying “taxes”, they said.
Nigerian-based Lafarge Africa Plc is a member of the Holcim Group. It is not yet clear if the Nigerian affliate was involved in any of the terrorism financing charges either in the Middle East or the Sahel region of Africa.
Lafarge Africa Plc was incorporated on 24th February, 1959 and listed as a publicly quoted company on the Nigerian Exchange on 17th February, 1979. Lafarge serves Nigeria with a wide range of building and construction solutions designed to meet housing and construction needs from small projects like individual home buildings to major construction and infrastructure projects.
With plants in Ewekoro and Sagamu in the South-West, Mfamosing in the South and Ashaka in the North-East of Nigeria, Lafarge Africa Plc currently has an installed cement production capacity of 10.5MTPA and has plans to grow in the near term.
