The French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) requested on Friday, February 9, that cement maker Lafarge and nine individuals be brought before the criminal court on charges of financing terrorist groups, due to its activities in Syria in 2013 and 2014. It is also for violating international embargoes prohibiting payments to terrorist entities such as the Islamic State group and the Al-Nosra Front, according to the charges seen by Le Monde.

Lafarge has been part of Swiss building materials conglomerate Holcim since 2015. It has acknowledged that in 2013 and 2014 it paid nearly €13 million to middlemen to keep its Syrian cement factory running, long after other French firms had pulled out of the country. But the company contends that it had no responsibility for the money winding up in the hands of groups allegedly including Islamic State.

But in a PNAT filing seen by AFP, prosecutors took a different view. The company "either intended the funds to be used entirely, or in part, towards the objective of committing terrorist acts, or was aware that this was how they would be used," they wrote.

Lafarge pulled its foreign staff from the Syrian site in 2012 but kept local workers in place until 2014, when the site was evacuated just before Islamic State took it over.

Several Syrian staff and NGOs – Sherpa and the European Center for Consitutional and Human Rights – filed a legal complaint against Lafarge, and France's judiciary opened a probe in 2017.

Last month, France's top appeals court ruled that Lafarge and the former managers could be charged with complicity in crimes against humanity over the pay-offs. Prosecutors are still investigating those accusations. However, the court threw out an earlier charge of endangering the lives of others, saying French law could not be applied to Syrians working in the factory.