NZZ: Former Lafarge boss says he knows nothing about payments to ISIS

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“The day I heard the word ‘DEAS’ (IS), I immediately ordered the factory to be shut down. This was in August 2014 and it was about negotiations with Daesh. There was no direct mention of money,” he told NZZ on Wednesday.

Lafarge is suspected of paying around 13m euros to terrorist groups, including the so-called Islamic State (IS), and intermediaries through its subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS) in 2013 and 2014.

Last October, Lafarge was fined $778 million in the United States. Cases related to the incident are still pending in France, including cases against Lafont and other former executives.

The allegations include financing a terrorist organization, endangering human life, breaking the embargo, and aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. A week ago, the Supreme Court in Paris postponed the decision to 19 September.

Holcim now has to deal with the matter after the Swiss cement company took over French rival Lafarge in 2015. “Had Holcim known about the payments made to terrorists in Syria at that time, the company would have given up on the takeover. This emerges from the admission of guilt in the US,” writes NZZ.

It is said that Lafarge remained silent about the event during the merger, thus deceiving Switzerland. Lafont, who urged Lafarge to merge and want to head the new group, opposes this. “This is unacceptable to me and hurts my reputation. So I have to react,” he said in an interview with NZZ.

Lafont justifies his ignorance with the theory of the secret service: Western secret services, including the French, are said to have used the cement plant as a base to monitor the activities of terrorist groups. So there were only a few people in the picture and it wasn’t him.

“As CEO, I should have known what was going on in Jalabiya,” Bruno Lafont told NZZ, and quickly assessed the situation: “But I was deprived of the information flow.” (SDA)

Source :Blick