Last year, Aggregate Industries’ parent company, Holcim, agreed to pay $778 million after its Lafarge subsidiary pleaded guilty to US charges of supporting Islamic State, becoming the first company in American history to be convicted of bribing a foreign terrorist organisation.
Previous posts covering the company’s involvement in Syria can be found here.
As we posted earlier this year:
Holcim – previously LafargeHolcim, the parent company of Aggregate Industries, which was formed after a "merger of equals" in 2015 between Swiss-based Holcim and French-based Lafarge – will be the ultimate beneficiary of the quarry at Straitgate Farm.The company changed its name in 2021, no doubt because of a number of controversies. One controversy – Lafarge’s previous support for terrorists in Syria – refuses to go away.
This week, Reuters announced:
Relations of a U.S. aid worker and American soldiers - all killed or injured by Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front - have lodged a legal claim against cement maker Lafarge over payments the French company made to extremist groups.
Court documents state:
Defendants' payments aided the terrorist attacks that targeted plaintiffs and their family members...Lafarge's support for ISIS and ANF ran deep. It operated a lucrative cement plant in northern Syria, and it decided that bribing Syrian terrorists offered the best way to protect its profits from the plant.
American families of IS victims sue cement maker Lafarge over Syria payments https://t.co/lQoukJQpX8 pic.twitter.com/omTmMFxaDw
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 28, 2023
