On 13 April 2026, the Paris Criminal Court issued a historic verdict for corporate accountability.

The court convicted the French company Lafarge and eight individuals – including four former top executives – for financing terrorist organisations and violating international sanctions. The court found that Lafarge made payments totalling EUR5.5m to several terrorist groups between 2013 and 2014 to keep its cement plant in Syria operational amidst the civil war, despite the risks to its employees.

The court ordered the maximum fine for the company, EUR1.125m , and prison sentences ranging from three to six years for former executives, including the former CEO.

The court found that Lafarge had put in place an “organised and opaque system” to make payments to Ahrar al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nosra, and the Islamic State “while fully aware that these organisations would allocate such funds, in whole or in part, to...the commission of terrorist acts”.

It further found that the payments “had the sole objective of maintaining the operation of the cement plant in Syria at all costs, while also preserving this market in anticipation of the end of the civil war”. The court highlighted that although the defendants were driven by a profit-seeking logic on behalf of the corporate entity, and did not share the terrorist groups’ ideologies, their awareness of the nature of the groups’ actions is sufficient to establish proof of intent.

Under French criminal law, corporate entities can be liable for offences committed on their behalf by their governing bodies or representatives. Lafarge’s defence team argued that the parent company could not be held liable for the actions of its Syrian subsidiary, as they are separate legal entities.

The court rejected this argument and pierced the corporate veil within the group: it found that Lafarge exercised effective control over its subsidiary – described by one of its executives as a “paper structure” – not only in terms of shareholding, but also at the operational and functional levels. The judgment underscores the “pyramidal” organisational structure, with the holding company Lafarge at the top, directing its Syrian subsidiary’s strategic decisions. Beyond the almost exclusive capitalistic control, the subsidiary was wholly financially dependent on Lafarge and artificially kept in operation through intra‑group loans granted by Lafarge.

Importantly, the tribunal held four former top executives of Lafarge and its subsidiary individually liable for the offence of financing terrorist groups. By virtue of their roles as representatives or governing bodies of Lafarge, the court found that their actions also directly triggered the liability of the parent company. The court notably recalled that the former CEO was the ultimate overseer of Lafarge’s strategic direction, was the only one empowered to decide on the closing of the factory and was the direct superior of the Deputy CEO involved in negotiating, validating and concealing payments to terrorist groups. As such, the court found that he was necessarily informed of and had approved these payments to terrorist entities.

These convictions show that the system of payments to terrorist groups prospered as a result of the combined actions of these key figures acting on behalf of the company to implement the “group’s policy”, which required maintaining the plant’s operations. The court highlighted the “cynicism” and “incoherencies” in Lafarge’s and its former executives’ defences and sharply criticised their indifference to the fact that the funds provided would support atrocities by terrorist groups.

The defendants’ narrative according to which the operations were pursued while ensuring the safety of employees, and for their benefit, was refuted by the testimonies of several former Syrian employees during the trial. They recounted pressures to come to work, kidnappings and threats at checkpoints which to the court “demonstrated how this apparently humanistic and socially minded line of argument was in fact cynical and merely a fallacious pretext claimed to justify decisions taken exclusively in the financial interests of LAFARGE SA, and in some cases those of its representatives and executives.” Unfortunately, the court ruled that Lafarge former employees were not entitled to compensation, finding that individuals cannot qualify as victims of terrorism financing. But the battle is not over. At the time Lafarge was providing financial support to the Islamic State, civilians in Syria were being subjected to crimes against humanity and the Yazidi genocide was unfolding. The company is still being investigated for complicity in crimes against humanity, a charge that exceeds the scope of terrorism financing by addressing participation in the gravest violations of international law.

Finally, while the Lafarge case appears to be an outrageous scandal, it is certainly not isolated. The facts were brought to light by what the court recalled as "tireless efforts of the civil society organisations and Syrian journalists", without whom "this criminal activity would likely not have been uncovered”. It is essential that NGOs and investigative journalists continue to support those affected by corporate crime and act as countervailing powers to confront actors with considerable financial means and outsized media and political influence.

Anna Kiefer is an Advocacy and Litigation Officer at Sherpa, in charge of criminal cases linked to armed conflicts and international crimes.

Cannelle Lavite is Co-Director of the business and human rights programme at ECCHR, involved in the Lafarge litigation as well as in other litigation on corporate crimes in international conflicts, such as French arms exports in the context of Yemen.