BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS! Cement Giant Lafarge Bosses Linked to Hima Cement Uganda, Convicted in ISIS Terror Cash Scandal

Hold onto your hard hats, Uganda! The same global cement giant that once dominated our local market through Hima Cement is now at the center of a jaw-dropping international terror financing scandal.

Lafarge has been found guilty of paying millions of dollars in protection money to jihadist groups, including the group calling itself Islamic State (IS), to keep its business running in Syria during the civil war.

Eight ex-Lafarge employees were also found guilty of financing terrorism, including former CEO Bruno Lafont who was jailed for six years on Monday.

The court in Paris found that Lafarge paid groups $6.5m (€5.59m; £4.83m) between 2013 and 2014 to keep its plant operating in northern Syria.

Judge Isabelle Prevost-Desprez said such payments had allowed proscribed organisations to gain control of the country’s natural resources, enabling them to finance attacks across the Middle East and Europe.

“It is clear to the court that the sole purpose of the funding of a terrorist organisation was to keep the Syrian plant running for economic reasons. Payments to terrorist entities enabled Lafarge to continue its operations,” Prevost-Desprez said.

“These payments took the form of a genuine commercial partnership with IS,” she added.

Lafarge told the BBC it acknowledged the court’s finding, which it said “concerns a legacy matter involving conduct that occurred more than a decade ago and was in flagrant violation of Lafarge’s code of conduct”.

It described the decision as an “important milestone” in the company’s actions to “address this legacy matter responsibly”.

The factory in Jalabiya, northern Syria, was bought by Lafarge in 2008 for $680m and began operations in 2010, months before civil war began in 2011.

Prosecutors said Lafarge employees were housed in the nearby town of Manbig and needed to cross the Euphrates river to access the plant.

Payments were made between 2013 and September 2014, prosecutors said, and included €800,000 to secure safe passage and €1.6m to purchase source materials from quarries under Islamic State control.

Nusra Front, which was affiliated to al-Qaeda and proscribed by the EU and others, was also among the groups Lafarge paid money to, judges said.

Alongside Lafont, former deputy managing director Christian Herrault was given a five-year prison sentence, while Firas Tlass, a Syrian ex-member of staff who made the payments to the jihadist groups, was sentenced in absentia to seven years in jail.

Herrault had argued that the decision to keep the factory open was made out of concern for local staff.

“We could have washed our hands of it and walked away, but what would have happened to the factory’s employees?” he said.

Lafarge, now owned by Swiss conglomerate Holcim, was fined more than €1m ($1.3m).

A separate investigation relating to complicity in crimes against humanity is ongoing.

The case was the first time a company was tried in France for financing terrorism.

It follows a 2022 case in the United States, when the firm admitted supporting proscribed groups and agreed to pay a $777.8m (£687.2m) penalty for payments it made to keep a factory running.

Civil war erupted in Syria in March 2011, following opposition to then-president Bashar al-Assad’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.

IS jihadists seized large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, declaring a so-called cross-border “caliphate” and implementing their brutal interpretation of Islamic law.

Ugandan Link

For many Ugandans, this isn’t just a distant scandal—it hits close to home.

Lafarge is the same multinational that took full control of Hima Cement in 1999, transforming it into one of Uganda’s leading cement producers. Under its watch, production skyrocketed from just 20,000 tonnes in the 1990s to a massive 1.7 million tonnes by 2018.

But in 2023, Lafarge’s parent company Holcim quietly exited Uganda, selling its 70% stake in Hima Cement to the Sarrai Group for $84 million.

Now, with this explosive conviction, questions linger over the legacy of a company that once helped build Uganda—while allegedly funding destruction elsewhere.

From constructing homes in Kasese to fueling conflict in Syria, the Lafarge story is a chilling reminder: not all that builds nations is clean beneath the surface.

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